Bethesda drags Warner Bros to court, claiming Westworld Mobile Game uses FO Shelter code

[Christophe Corazza]

Interesting. I have always understood that code is the property of the author, unless it explicitly renounces it. That would mean that, if Bethesda did not contractually explicitly record ownership of the code, Behavior still simply owns that code and Bethesda simply has no leg to stand on. On the other hand, I can not imagine that Bethesda has not completely sealed it.

 

In addition, I find it difficult in any case. If a developer writes code for one customer, who takes ownership of the code and the dev gets a customer who wants something similar some time later, then the code is likely to show strong similarities. This simply has to do with experience gained and simply the fact that there is only a limited number of ways in which you can write such an application.

 

So it all comes down to what has been laid down between Behavior and Bethesda contractually, but I really like to follow this discussion!

[dalekphalm]

17 minutes ago, Christophe Corazza said:

Interesting. I have always understood that code is the property of the author, unless it explicitly renounces it. That would mean that, if Bethesda did not contractually explicitly record ownership of the code, Behavior still simply owns that code and Bethesda simply has no leg to stand on. On the other hand, I can not imagine that Bethesda has not completely sealed it.

It's standard contract law for employees to sign away any copyright to code they produce at work. And in situations like this, there's likely a clause in the contract that gives ownership to Bethesda.

 

However, without seeing the contract, there's no way to tell yet. I would be shocked if Bethesda didn't put a clause in the contract giving them ownership.

17 minutes ago, Christophe Corazza said:

In addition, I find it difficult in any case. If a developer writes code for one customer, who takes ownership of the code and the dev gets a customer who wants something similar some time later, then the code is likely to show strong similarities. This simply has to do with experience gained and simply the fact that there is only a limited number of ways in which you can write such an application.

In a case like this, Behaviour should probably license the code from Bethesda to allow WB to use it. Bethesda would probably have even given them a very cheap licensing deal due to their working partnership.

 

Or Behaviour should have negotiated ownership of the base platform code.

17 minutes ago, Christophe Corazza said:

So it all comes down to what has been laid down between Behavior and Bethesda contractually, but I really like to follow this discussion!

Agreed. This will likely be a pretty open and shut case, depending on what the contract says.