Midway Games can now claim three recent successes, despite their seemingly tenuous financial situation. Recently, a federal judge decided that Midway was not at fault in a weird copyright infringement lawsuit involving Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy. The other two successes deal with the media success of Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe and being sold to an investor obviously looking to put Midway back on every gamer’s mind.
According to 1UP, screenwriter William Crawford believed that Midway stole ideas from a screenplay he created simply titled “Psi-Ops.” The “Psi-Ops” script was copyrighted in 1998, years before Midway copyrighted the game in 2004. The ideas that were supposedly stolen are the core of the game, stuff like telekinetic powers and even plot elements.
The judge found that “no reasonable juror” would be able to spot anything “substantially similar” between the game and the script. Incidentally, the judge echoed many of our thoughts on the videogame-to-movie dilemma.
