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Capcom Stung With $12 Million Lawsuit Over “Stolen” Photos In Its Games

Imogen Donovan

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Capcom Stung With $12 Million Lawsuit Over “Stolen” Photos In Its Games

Featured Image Credit: Capcom

Capcom has landed in hot water for the apparent use of unlicensed photographs in the environments of a number of its games, including Resident Evil 4.

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Here's some context for you. Artist Judy A. Juracek published a volume of over a thousand photographs of "outstanding, vibrantly colorful visual images of surface textures--wood, stone, marble, brick, plaster, stucco, aggregates, metal, tile, and glass" that she had taken and shared for the purpose of "visual research" for fellow artists. Released in 1996, Surfaces also contained a CD-ROM with the TIFF files for every single image, and Juracek won the USITT Golden Pen Award for the Surfaces series in 2003. Naturally, these photographs are available to whoever wants to use them for their projects, but they require a license from her if they are to be used in commercial pieces (in other words, anything you would make money from). The case claiming that Capcom has lifted these files without the expressed permission of Juracek was submitted to the United States District Court in Connecticut on June 4th.

In the wake of this, I'm certainly looking at the Resident Evil series with new eyes. Check out our comprehensive video on every entry in the survival horror staple here.

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Polygon has access to the lawsuit here for your perusal, but I'll summarise some of what the 147 page complaint says. Interestingly enough, Juracek's attention to the photographs used in the Resident Evil and Devil May Cry games arose from the ransomware attack that Capcom suffered in late 2020. "Some Capcom data released by the hackers included high resolution images of artwork used in Resident Evil and other games," reads the lawsuit. "The file names for at least one of the images from the Capcom hacked files are the same file names as those used on the [Surfaces] CD-ROM."

For example, the lawsuit relays that a metal texture was titled "ME009" on the book's CD-ROM and it just so happens to be titled "ME009" in Capcom's breached folders. According to her, at least 80 photographs have been used by the developer across over 200 individual instances - even the texture on the logo for Resident Evil 4.

Resident Evil 4 / Credit: Capcom
Resident Evil 4 / Credit: Capcom
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"It is hard to imagine that Juracek would take a photo of shattered glass in Italy and interior mansion door design and that Capcom artists would reproduce the exact same pattern of shattered glass in a logo and interior design without benefit of Juracek's photographs," explained the document. The artist is requesting the court to award her up to $12 million in damages as a result of copyright infringement, plus $2,500 to $25,000 for each used photograph through damages for "false copyright management and removal of copyright management." Hardly chump change.

Capcom is apparently "aware of the lawsuit" and had "no further comment" when Polygon contacted the company over the controversy. As there is a VR version of Resident Evil 4 waiting in the wings, we'll have to wait and see whether this affects that game.

Topics: News, Resident Evil, Capcom

Imogen Donovan
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