Jun 05, 2021 20:30:00

'Capcom used his work in Bio and Devil May Cry without permission,' the artist complains.

by

Julie Scott

Artist Judy A. Juracek sues Capcom for using his work in the popular Capcom titles ' Resident Evil 4 ' and ' Devil May Cry' series without permission. ..

Artist says Capcom stole her photos for Resident Evil, Devil May Cry games in lawsuit --Polygon
https://www.polygon.com/22519568/resident-evil-4-copyright-infringement-lawsuit-capcom

On Friday, June 4, 2021, local time, Mr. Juracek filed a complaint in a Connecticut court. In the proceedings, Juracek claims that his copyrighted work is being used by Resident Evil 4, Devil May Cry, and other Capcom games without permission.

Mr. Juracek has published a book called 'Surfaces ' with more than 1200 photographs, which is described as intended to be 'used for' visual research 'of artists, architects and designers.' I will. This book comes with a CD-ROM that stores the data of the recorded work, but in order to use this data for commercial use, it is necessary to contact Mr. Jurasek and obtain a license. However, according to a complaint filed by Mr. Juracek in court, Capcom has never contacted him for a license.

According to Juracek, his work is used in a variety of Capcom works, with 80 photographs and over 100 pages of documentation listing evidence.

One of the cases where Capcom uses Mr. Juracek's work without permission is the Resident Evil 4 logo. The left end of the image below is Mr. Juracek's work expressing the texture of shattered glass, and the right is the Resident Evil 4 logo. If you look at the image in the middle, you can see that the logo uses Mr. Juracek's work.

In addition, Capcom is said to be using photos taken by Mr. Jurasek for textures in the game, and more than 200 cases of unauthorized use are pointed out in the complaint.

Some of the data that Mr. Juracek cites as evidence of unauthorized use comes from

Capcom's data breach that occurred in November 2020. When an attack by someone's ransomware was detected, it was revealed that personal information such as employees was leaked, but some of the leaked data was 'used in biohazard and other games. A high-resolution image of the artwork that was created was included, Jurasek explained.

In addition, Mr. Jurasek pointed out that the photo with the file name 'MA079' recorded on Surfaces is also used as it is in the texture used for the remake version of the original Resident Evil.

Jurasek's lawyer is seeking up to $ 12 million in damages for copyright infringement, for $ 25-25,000 per photo used. I'm asking for payment. The Capcom representative commented to the game media Polygon that he was aware of the proceedings, but no other comments were received.