Article: Police Raid Square Enix Office

Translation by Professor of MM cafe

Interesting news today. According to a report by the MSN Sankei, Square Enix's main office in Tokyo and related personnel were raided on August 5 by the Osaka district police due to a criminal lawsuit filed by SNK Playmore.

The claim alleges that SNK Playmore's intellectual properties were being infringed by Square Enix's publishing division in their popular arcade manga "High-score Girl". Police officials will be looking through confiscated evidence and will be conducting interrogations to the editor as well as the author, Rensuke Oshikiri.

"High-score Girl" is a love comedy manga that takes place in Japan during the 1990s and features many scenes with fighting games which was the big trend at the time. SNK Playmore claims that the manga has over 100 cutscenes featuring characters from their games including KOF and Samurai Shodown. The end pages of the books have (C) printed with SNKPlaymore's company name, making it look as though they were published under permission.

SNK Playmore realized the infringement when anime production for High-score Girl began in summer of 2013 and its production company contacted them for authorization on the use of their characters and music. The company filed suit this May.


http://sankei.jp.msn.com/west/west_a...2000002-n2.htm

Now, Some personal notes about this queer incident.

1- Square Enix and SNKPlaymore hasn't been in a rocky relationship at all, so this may come as a surprise to many people. Keep in mind that Square Enix was one of the few companies that actually did collaborations with SNKP with their "Lord Of Vermilion" arcade card game, which had cameos from KOF characters. Square Enix is also the parent company of Taito that sells the TypeX arcade board and also runs the NESiCA arcade distribution system, which SNKP's titles currently run on.

2- This was clearly filed in criminal court, not civil court. Otherwise the police couldn't have gotten involved.

3- According to the article, SNKP realized in Summer of 2013, but they didn't file a suit until this May. That's a huge mysterious gap. Perhaps things will become more clear in the upcoming months.

I was just reading this! WHy SE, Why o' why did you not get approval to use other people's characters. You know better!

Well, all I can say is something strange is definitely going on. It sounds like a past deal fell through, or a personal falling out between head honcho's... strange stuff going on indeed, but unsurprising, unfortunately.

what the smurf

Hey, who changed the title of my thread?

I think this is awfully weird, but if SE is found guilty I wonder what that'll mean for their games.

I did when I linked it with an article.

I'm kind of enjoying the irony of a company often bemoaned for their heavy handed protection of copyright being caught in a copyright infringement case themselves.

Doubt this will have major ramifications, they'll get sued, settle out of court and have the copyright characters removed from the offending titles.

When have they been heavy handed with copyright protection?

Crimson Echoes, a fan-made ROM hack sequel to Chrono Trigger, is perhaps the most notorious case.

Not to mention the fan translation patch for Type-0, I think a few VII projects have been shot down as well, and the fan made 3D remake of Chrono Trigger to name a few. SE is pretty heavy handed about controlling their IPs even if they haven't been really utilized in years.