Kim & Chang successfully represented a global game company and its Korean subsidiary against a copyright infringement claim alleging similarities between an in-game character skin item and the plaintiff’s fan art, resulting in the dismissal of all claims in the first instance, which was finalized without appeal. 
The plaintiff sought to circumvent the absence of substantial similarity between their fan art and client’s in-game skin by construing the overarching theme and individual design components of the skin as a “compilation work” protected by copyright. 

Our firm counterargued that the plaintiff’s claim was in essence an attempt to argue that ideas rather than expressions are copyright-protected and, as such, inconsistent with the basic principles of copyright infringement. 

We utilized detailed visual materials and comparison charts to convey to the court that neither the theme nor the individual components were substantially similar and that ostensible similarities, if any, between the client’s design and the plaintiff’s design were inevitable due to both designs having the client’s original character as their creative basis. Our firm presented supplementary visual materials comparing a diverse range of original game costume designs and fan-made artworks to familiarize the court with the broader industrial context and persuade that the alleged ‘original’ elements were in fact commonly found tropes.

The plaintiff also moved for a document production order seeking extensive information on the game's development process and revenue. We successfully argued that the requested documents were irrelevant to the substance of the case as well as procedurally flawed, persuading the court to dismiss the plaintiff’s motion and protecting clients’ commercially sensitive information.

Ultimately, the case was uniformly dismissed on all counts and finalized without appeal, saving clients’ time and resources.