Capcom in Hot Water Over Similarities Between Dead Rising and Dawn of the Dead
By Jonathan on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 at 2:00 AM PST In Capcom, Game Companies, Game Consoles, Game Platforms, Game Related Laws, Gamer Life, Games, Games Industry, Microsoft, Microsoft
To this day, most people describe Capcom’s phenomenal Dead Rising as being similar to the George A. Romero classic, Dawn of the Dead. It’s not a stretch considering they both involve zombies and a mall, but it seems some people on the legal side of things have now taken an interest. Capcom recently filed for a declaratory judgment in a Los Angeles court to prevent New Line Cinema and the MKR group from asserting their intellectual property rights over Romero’s film. The complaint came after they received a letter from New Line arguing about the similarities between the two. MKR’s legal counsel sent a similar letter to Capcom, Microsoft, and Best Buy. Apparently, the different groups have been in talks for some time concerning the alleged copyright infringement and, so far, haven’t been able to resolve the issue.
On the one hand, sure there are plenty of similarities between the game and the film. But on the other hand, the concept of “zombies in a mall” is a pretty vague idea. If all it took were a setting and enemy to make a copyright claim, every other game developer would be constantly bickering over who gets the rights to “marines in space.”
“every other game developer would be constantly bickering over who gets the rights to “marines in space.””
we all know blizzard would clean up in that fight.
For the Romero camp to claim infringement is retarded. George Romero stole a majority of his ideas from I Am Legend. Romero certainly helped revolutionize the “zombie horror genre” but he really can’t take credit for the individual ideas. Most of his movies were pieced together with ideas from many other stories that had appeared long before he was on the scene.
It does say on the cover that the game had nothing to do with the creators or owners of the film. Doesn’t that clear Capcom from any litigation? lol
Go home New Line.
this is fucking retarded someone was going to make a game about zombies and put you in a mall capcom just beat everyone to it
ps the guy that said romero stole from i am ledgend is retarded too he could have picked way better movies to rip of u 12 yr old moron
I like pie……
YES! I hate capcom! I wrote them a bunch of times and they have turned their backs on pc gamers so i say sink them! even though dead rising is a great game i wont buy an xbox360 for it. I like to mod my games and you cant do that with consol games and pay like $80 a game no thanks!
@imright
“I Am Legend” was a novel by Richard Matheson that was published in 1954, over a decade before Romero’s first horror movie, “Night of the Living Dead,” was released. Read a book.
@imright: actually Romero himself has even stated that he got his ideas from I am Legend, so how does that make me retarded? It’s also fairly obvious that I Am Legend was a huge inspiration for Night Of The Living Dead.
William… you are either one of the biggest troll’s i have ever seen, or you are a genuine idiot, i could take it as far as “Romero himself has even stated that he got his ideas from I am Legend” possibly for his up-coming movies but as soon as you said “It’s also fairly obvious that I Am Legend was a huge inspiration for Night Of The Living Dead.” is just complete bullshit and you know it, and i dont think i need to explain why, but seeing as you may be THAT stupid, then i will explain. *Ahem*
Night of the living dead – 1968
I Am Legend – 2007
…catch my drift?
but note that I’m speaking strictly in movie terms, Night of the living dead was the first big hit. but as this topic has already said, if you are going to argue about thing like that then there would be no point in making more than 1 movie that has a basic structure such as survival, or horror, sure books and movies are going to be alike, there’s no avoiding it and that is the end of the story, some movies are almost certainly going to be similar to others, so don’t bring up “Blah Blah he stole from them Blah Blah” you have already said “George Romero stole a majority of his ideas from I Am Legend” it’s called inspiration…