Clayton Haugen who is a freelance photographer, videographer and writer from North Carolina pulled Activision Blizzard, Infinity Ward, and Major League Gaming Corp. into court for committing copyright infringement. Haugen alleged Activision for copying his character of "Cade Janus" for the purpose of creating the character of “Mara” who has been portrayed as an operator in-game “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare”. "Cade Janus" was the main character in Haugen’s short story “November Renaissance”. According to the lawsuit, Haugen created the central character and gave it the name Cade Janus for November Renaissance and he was also hoping to create a film based upon his short story.
The complaint was filed at The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Complainant made allegations upon Activision and the game's developer Infinity Ward of “deliberately, intentionally, and comprehensively” copying his character of Cade Janus.
Haugen told in an interview, “Back in 2017, I hired model, cosplayer, and streamer Alex Zedra to portray the character in several photographs, which were shared on social media and also used in pitches to film studios. But these photographs were used by Activision as a guide for the creation of Mara.” “Activision actually hired Zedra to scan her likeness for the game and Activision even chose to hire the same makeup artist to reproduce the look down to the same hair extension” Haugen further added. The lawsuit also claimed that Activision did not stop here but also requested to Zedra for asking Haugen for the same clothes which were worn by her in the original photoshoot.
Now the question arises why he chose to file this suit after more than 1 year of the addition of Mara’s character in the game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. To this, Haugen informed that he already got registration of his copyrights to both November Renaissance and its treatment, featuring the protagonist Cade Janus way back in the years 2012 and 2013, but he was left for several of the photographs depicting the character which got registered only in December 2020. Then only he was allowed to file this lawsuit which resulted in such delay. It is interesting to note that the character of Mara was not there but was added in the year 2019 to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare as part of the season one battle pass.
“To conceal their planned infringement of Haugen’s Cade Janus photographs and his Cade Janus character, defendants required the talent and the makeup professional to sign non-disclosure agreements,” the filing says.
Haugen also presented additional evidence where one of the photographs from the photoshoot got featured in one of the development documents for Activision’s games such as the previous Call of Duty game, Black Ops IV. Haugen used this document for proving the access that the company was having to his photographs. He even declared the date when they first accessed his photographs i.e., September 2017 that is even before the release of Modern Warfare.
Haugen is seeking in his lawsuit to recover all the monetary remedies from infringement of the Defendants that not only include all of their profits which are attributable to their infringements but also his attorney's fees which he incurred in this action to the full extent permitted by 17 U.S.C It was reported by Activision last year that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has sold above 30 million copies globally which surpass all of their prior iterations of the series as of September 2020.
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