God Of War Copyright Lawsuit Filed

Two Californians have filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against God of War designer David Jaffe and Sony Computer Entertainment America alleging that the game copied elements of the plaintiffs' unproduced screenplay and its supplementary map. Ah, frivolous lawsuits. You never fail to entertain.

The plaintiffs, Jonathan Bissoon-Dath (screenwriter) and Jennifer Barrette-Herzog (artist) allege that the screenplay, The Adventures of Own: Owen's Olympic Adventure, and accompanying map were sent in 2002 to Sony Pictures and agents who did business with SCEA business. Somehow, the screenplay and map were passed along to David Jaffe. He then put all of their ideas into God of War, whilst cackling madly. So the lawsuit alleges, anyway.

GamePolitics obtained a copy of the paperwork and the "suspicious similarities" between God of War and the screenplay are pretty entertaining. One example: "In plaintiff's original work and God of War, the Champion's family is hacked to death in a one-room building in a small peaceful village." Even better: "...Owen must cross the Bottomless Valley over a long, sagging suspension bridge, shown on Barrette-Herzog's map... in God of War Kratos must cross the Bottomless Chasm on a long, sagging suspension bridge..."

Seeing as both the game and the screenplay are based off Greek mythology, I'd be surprised if they didn't overlap substantially. Right off the bat, they're both going to be about mortals battling against vindictive, petty gods who live on Mt. Olympus. It'd be like 2K Games suing EA Sports because Madden and NFL 2K5 both depict games of football between two teams of eleven players. There's too much DNA shared between the projects at the outset and the specific similarities beyond that common ground just aren't convincing.

Expect this whole lawsuit to get tossed out quickly. I am curious if we'll see a blog post from Jaffe about all this, though.

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