CCG firm sues Disney’s subsequent huge card game for alleged ‘premeditated’ IP heist, asks courtroom to dam its launch and throw the e book at them

Hey, are you excited in regards to the upcoming Disney Lorcana collectible card game, set to launch in August, which supplies you the possibility to “Wield magic inks and the ability of Lorcana to assemble your staff of Disney characters” in white-knuckle card-based duels? Nicely possibly cool your jets for a second, as a result of an organization referred to as Higher Deck is taking its maker to courtroom.

Lorcana is an licenced Disney product being made by Ravensburger, which has additionally made merchandise based mostly round titanic franchises like Harry Potter and Minecraft, however Higher Deck is accusing Ravensburger of “stealing and copying Higher Deck’s authentic game” which it then “repackaged and marketed as Lorcana”.

Particularly, Higher Deck reckons that Ryan Miller—certainly one of its former designers who now works at Ravensburger—purloined mental property from Rush of Ikorr, a card game he labored on at Higher Deck, and put it straight into Disney Lorcana, giving Disney’s game a headstart and letting it beat Ikorr to market with its personal concepts. 

Higher Deck says that “After over a 12 months of growing Rush of Ikorr alongside Higher Deck, Miller terminated his contract with Higher Deck and, both earlier than termination or simply after, started working for Defendant Ravensburger,” at which level the corporate alleges he ported over the concepts he developed for Higher Deck. The corporate even says that Ravensburger was in on the heist, and that Miller was “aided and inspired by Ravensburger, who now seeks to revenue from the stolen mental property”.

I’ve reached out to each Ravensburger and Higher Deck about this, and I will update this piece if I hear again.

Higher Deck is absolutely throwing down the gauntlet. In its courtroom submitting, it is asking for cost of damages, injunctive reduction to forestall Disney Lorcana’s launch, restitution of cash it paid Miller, and “punitive damages in an quantity applicable to punish Miller and Ravensburger and deter others from participating in related misconduct”.

Ravensburger hasn’t stated a lot in regards to the state of affairs thus far. In an announcement to ComicBook, a spokesperson for the corporate stated solely that “Ravensburger has not been served with a grievance and thus can not speculate on potential authorized issues. We at Ravensburger stand behind the integrity of our staff and the originality of our merchandise”. I am no professional, however that sounds to me like an organization nonetheless making an attempt to determine how it will deal with a authorized bombshell that simply went off in its yard.