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.