Judge awards whopping $89 million for infringement on World of Warcraft copyright

World of Warcraft is an immensely popular online game. Millions of people worldwide log on to the online world to conduct in some fantasy adventuring and questing.

Over the last few years, Blizzard has taken a tough stance on third parties developing private servers to log on to the World of Warcraft world or create software mods that operate in the WoW environment. When these cases end up in court, as they usually do when the private hosts do not take them down when so requested by Blizzard, the WoW developer most often comes out on top.

Still, some people find it a risk worth taking. One such company, Scapegaming, developed private servers offering access to the World of Warcraft universe, including a micropayment system.

Setting up private servers is a violation of Blizzards EULA and in earlier cases it was established that Blizzard could successfully claim copyright infringement, too. Just under a year ago, Blizzard started a lawsuit against Scapegaming.

In the period that Scapegaming was operating, it managed to make a profit of $3 million. A Californian court has ruled that these profits should befall Blizzard instead. Furthermore, the court ruled that the attorney’s fees of $63.000 need to be paid by the defendant and awarded the plaintiff with over 85 $million in statutory damages. The amount of damages are this high because of the commercial nature of the infringement.

Scapegaming may appeal the height of the damages.