Tag Archives: Lawsuit

Skullgirls Dev Begins Indiegogo Campaign For DLC Character Squigly, Reveals First Male DLC Character, Collapse Of Reverge Labs Further Explained

Over the weekend, Skullgirls developer Lab Zero showed off footage for their first DLC character, Squigly. From the video up on the Indiegogo, she’s being set up as a long-range character thanks to her parasite host Leviathan. Lab Zero states that if they can reach their goal in within the 31 days they have for the campain, Squigly will be a free DLC character for 3 months, then cost $5 for those who didn’t get her during the time alotted. They also revealed the first male character for the game, Big Band. He’ll be a charge character and can also do command grabs and anti-air moves. The team says that Mike wanted Big Band to “play like Q from Street Fighter 3 Third Strike, ‘but good’.” Big Band is slated to be the next character they’ll be able to work on if they meet their stretch goal detailed on their Indiegogo page.

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Patent Trolls On The Loose Again, Going After… Podcasters?

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When my colleague Anthony showed this on the staff page, I very much surprised at what I was reading. I mean, the usual targets patent trolls claim as theirs is tech stuff, so something like podcasts is not even in my purview. But lo and behold Patent trolls have sunk to a new low. According to Julie Samuels of lobby group Electronic Frontier Foundation, a company called Personal Audio are going after podcasters for supposedly “claiming that it owns a patent that covers podcasting technology.” She explains that Personal Audio is using very broad terminology to catch many in its huge web of deception. One example she presents is how they define distribution of episodes.

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Kevin Butler Actor Was Sued By Sony

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Of the many titles Kevin Butler has donned during his tenure at Sony, VP of Lawsuit Defendant would probably be the last thing on his mind. The lawsuit was sparked after Jerry Lambert, who plays Kevin Butler in Sony’s Playstation 3 ads, appeared in a Bridgestone commercial as one of the scientists testing out tires. The ad was part of Bridgestone’s GameOn campaign where a tire purchase could net you a free Nintendo Wii. In the commercial itself, the scientists, including Lambert, are seen playing Mario Kart Wii. Sony wasn’t too fond of the man playing and advertising a competitor’s game and console, and on September 11th they filed a lawsuit against him citing IP violation. Bridgestone proceeded to remove Lambert’s image from all of their ads for the remainder of their campaign. This begs the question though: are they suing him for portraying a very similar character, or are they suing him for that plus associating himself with a competitor. I have a feeling that they would’ve let him be if he was doing something else as the character. But since he was playing a Wii, that probably wasn’t flying with Sony.

Either way, it looks like both parties might be coming to an out-of-court settlement. In a filing, the lawyer representing Sony called the courtroom deputy and said that they were coming to an agreement. The court then ordered Sony, “by October 12, 2012, to either: (1) withdraw the ex parte motion; or (2) file a status update describing the current status of the dispute and whether a ruling on the motion will be necessary.” So currently the case is still ongoing, but it looks like it’ll all come to an end soon. I guess we can rule out Kevin Butler being in Playstation All-Stars then huh?

SCEA sues Bridgestone and Jerry Lambert (Kevin Butler actor) over Game On promotion [NeoGAF, via VentureBeat]