Blizzard Entertainment
© Blizzard EntertainmentBEIJING (AFP) - Chinese IT firm Founder Electronics Co. claims it lost more than one billion yuan (132 million dollars) through the unauthorised use of five of its fonts in the multiplayer role-playing game, Xinhua news agency said late Thursday.
Founder has filed an "interim claim" at a Beijing court for 100 million yuan in damages against California-based World of Warcraft developer Blizzard Entertainment, Shanghai-based IT company The9, which runs the game in China, and Qingwentuwen firm which distributes the game in Beijing, it said.
Under Chinese law damages could be calculated either by the defendant's illegal gains from the copyright infringement or according to the plaintiff's losses, Founder said in a statement, according to Xinhua.
With 7.5 million World of Warcraft players worldwide, the infringement was "serious", the company said.
"The lost earnings of one billion yuan was a conservative estimate," Xinhua quoted from the company statement.
Founder says it is the world's largest provider of Chinese fonts and also has hundreds of multi-language fonts.
The damages sought by Founder were believed to be among the largest for an intellectual property suit in China.
In World of Warcraft, players control a character avatar which explores a fantasy virtual world, fighting monsters and going on quests, cooperating or fighting with other players' avatars along the way to progress through dozens of game levels.
Blizzard is a unit of French telecommunications and media giant Vivendi.
©AFP