In other words, there has been one such thing in the Japanese game industry recently.
Kumi Saori, author of the novel version of SE's popular game Dragon Quest 5, took SE and Toho corporation to court, demanding that they lose 2 million yen.
It all started with the infringement of the names of the characters in the novel.
In August last year, the CG movie "Dragon Quest Your Story", based on the game "Dragon Quest 5", used the name of the protagonist in the novel without authorization.
You know, although the protagonist in the novel has his own name, the name of the protagonist in the game is given by the player, so strictly speaking, the game owner kilometer does not have an official name.
The filmmakers used the names of the characters in the novel without the authorization of the original author and adapted them.
According to statistics, that name appears in a total of 487 places in the novel, which leads many viewers to recognize two different characters in the novel and the movie as the same person because of the name.
Before the release of the film, Kumi Saori did not know about this matter, and after the release of the film, she learned that the protagonist of the film had the same name as the protagonist of the novel, and ran to theorize with SE.
But SE said —
"The name is very common and should not be protected by copyright law."
After that, there was this prosecution case.
Originally, Jigme Saori only asked the other party to apologize publicly, but after consulting with a lawyer, it was found that the court did not support a public apology at all in such incidents.
Therefore, Jigme Yarn also changed her mind and asked for 2 million yen in compensation, and formally sued SE and Toho on the 24th of this month.
Although the matter of a name may seem small, it is indeed infringing, and Japan is quite serious about piracy.
After all, for companies, copyright issues are a matter of life and death.
In Japan, there are also many disputes over copyright.
For example, last year, Kodansha sued a website that illegally published its manga, and finally lost 160 million yen!
Kodansha is arguably one of the largest manga publishing houses in Japan, and along with Shueisha and Kokukan, kodansha is known as the mitsuo of manga in The Japanese publishing industry.
And the illegal website that was prosecuted was called "Distant Dream Site", which illegally published well-known manga from Kodansha's 8 manga magazines.
Kodansha filed a lawsuit in July last year, and in November, it was finally ruled in favor.
The 160 million yen compensation amount can be regarded as one of the largest copyright disputes in recent years.
However, if you want to talk about the severity of copyright disputes, you have to mention the 14-year "High Score Girl" infringement case.
The case, for example, in 14 years shocked Japan, when a total of 15 people were prosecuted by the police.
In fact, the friends who have watched "High Score Girl" must know that the work is originally about the story of the male and female protagonists playing arcade games together, and there are naturally many classic arcade games in the story, such as "King of Fighters", "Street Fighter" and so on.
Originally, the author also marked the copyright source on the comic, but no one expected that in August 2014, the game company SNK sued Square, the copyright owner of the comic, for infringement.
Later, the Metropolitan Police Department also dispatched police forces to search the Square Enix Building and took a large number of cartoons and one-liners as evidence.
Because of the huge momentum of this incident, it also caused a huge response in Japan.
At the end of the same year, 26 law scholars and well-known cartoonists from meiji University's Institute of Finance and Law also issued a joint statement saying that the Constitution should not interfere with the free creation of authors and hinder cultural development.
However, after investigation, it was also found that it was indeed infringing, because no one had ever called the copyright company.
Originally, when the author Oshikirisuke was creating manga, he asked the editor-in-charge to apply for authorization from those companies, but for some reason, the editor-in-charge did not go at all, and told the author that he had applied, so the author drew it happily.
It wasn't until it was time to animate that the seriousness of the matter exploded, and Square remembered to look for those companies to confirm the license, and it turned out that not only SNK, but all the companies involved in the copyright did not have authorization.
Fortunately, only SNK has filed a lawsuit, and if all the companies go together, it will be an unprecedented case in the Japanese copyright industry.
And 1 year later, Square also reconciled with SNK, and finally had the "High Score Girl" animation we saw.
I believe that there are still many people whose copyright awareness is not too strong.
After all, for the general public, piracy is cheap and easy to use, why bother to spend so much money to buy the genuine version?
Although no one can force everyone to choose the genuine version, I hope you can remember that every penny you spend is voting for the world you want.