mmorpg-game.net

BEIJING, Aug 15, 2007

Founder Electronics Co., Ltd. has confirmed on August 15th in Beijing, China, that they have filed a copyright infringement lawsuit on World of Warcraft (WOW) in the China mainland, against the game’s US game developer Blizzard Entertainment. Founder Electronics is a well-known Beijing-based provider of across-media information transmission technologies, products, and services and is the largest provider of Chinese fonts in China.

Almost 90% of the press offices, publishing houses and printing plants in the People’s Republic of China use Founder Electronics fonts to typeset and print enormous quantities of newspapers, books, magazines, textbooks, documents and packages and 60% of the oversea Chinese-language newspapers and magazines are printed with the database.

Claims for compensation are as much as CNY 100 million, Founder Electronics has confirmed. Blizzard Entertainment has been accused of using five Founder fonts from the Founder Font Database, which Founder Electronics have patented. The use of the fonts by Blizzard Entertainment without permission also violates the Copyright Law of the People’s Republic of China.

The copyright infringement brings a loss of more than CNY 1 billion to Founder Electronics, according to its preliminary estimate. The case has been accepted and heard in a Beijing court.

Blizzard Entertainment has apparently run into a series of copyright protection accusations in China. In recent years, the US government has often criticized the Chinese government for incapably protecting intellectual properties in China, resulting a lot of US companies suffer from losses.

This new development is certain to have an impact on the release of the more troubled simplified Chinese-language Burning Crusade, the first expansion version of WOW in the mainland.

The9, Blizzard Entertainment’s Chinese Partner, is said not to have gotten approval for the version’s commercial operation in the mainland from Chinese regulators. This was disclosed by persons close to the company, who chose not to be identified. The9 is therefore unable to commercially operate the expansion version this year and has attempted to cover up the news in front of millions of Chinese WOW gamers who are already furious about their service.

Chinese WoW gamers have been enraged at the repeatedly delayed release of the version in the Chinese mainland steered by The9 who have accused by players as ‘arrogant’ and many have called for boycotting all the games operated by The9, including WOW.

As a result, Blizzard Entertainment’s finances may be seriously affected due to these latest developments in China.