A new lawsuit alleges that Capcom may have used hundreds of unlicensed photos to create materials for games like Resident Evil 4 e Devil May Cry.
As reported by the website Polygon (via IGN), artist Judy A. Juracek has filed a copyright infringement complaint with the Connecticut court system accusing Capcom of using images from her book “Surfaces” in several games without licensing them from her.
According to the acquired process, Juracek travels the world photographing several drawings as part of his research. She has compiled her photos into a book and CD-ROM called “Surfaces”, whose copyright Juracek protected in 1996. And “interested parties” can contact Juracek to request a license to use the images in her book.
However, Juracek claims that Capcom has never contacted her to obtain a license for the images in her book, despite presenting nearly 100 cases in which she claims her photos can be found in Capcom games, including Resident Evil 4.
A prominent example is a photo of broken glass that Juracek took in Italy, which was apparently used for the logo of Resident Evil 4. In a second example, Juracek shared a photograph she took of a mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, which is similar to a drawing that appears in Resident Evil 4. The lawsuit claims that since the mansion is not available to the public, it would have been impossible for Capcom to have taken the exact same photograph.
Juracek was partially warned about the hack that Capcom suffered in 2020. As part of the leaks, some Capcom data released included high-resolution images used in Resident Evil and other games, and the filenames “for at least one of Capcom’s hacked file images are the same filenames used on the CD-ROM”. In other words, Capcom didn’t even rename the files.
Juracek’s lawyers are seeking up to $12 million in damages for copyright infringement, as well as $2,500 to $25,000 for every photograph used for “false copyright management and removal of copyright management.”
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