Schon mehrmals haben wir darüber berichtet, dass sich Valve und sein HL2-Publisher Vivendi Interactive nicht mehr ganz so grün sind - insbesondere deswegen, weil Valve seine Spiele an Vivendi vorbei über Steam verkauft.
Gabe Newell beschäftigt für den Rechtsstreit sieben Anwälte und hat schon eine Mio. US-$ dafür ausgegeben. Scheinbar macht sich die Ausgabe jetzt bezahlt, ein Gericht in Seattle hat Valve im ersten Streitfall recht gegegen.
Mit dem Urteil ist es Vivendi untersagt worden, Valve Games an Internet-Caffees zu vertreiben, Valves
Cyber-Caffee Programm wird damit zur einzigen legalen Bezugsquelle von Counter-Strike & Co für Internet-Caffees, zumindest in den Vereinigten Staaten. Die Originale Pressemeldung:
Zitat:
Monday, November 29 at 4:52 pm PST.
VALVE WINS SUMMARY JUDGMENT MOTIONS IN COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT CASE
Valve today announced the U.S. Federal District Court in Seattle, WA granted its motion for summary judgment on the matters of Cyber Café Rights and Contractual Limitation of Liability in its copyright infringement suit with Sierra/Vivendi Universal Games.
Judge Thomas S. Zilly ruled that Sierra/Vivendi Universal Games, and its affiliates, are not authorized to distribute (directly or indirectly) Valve games through cyber cafés to end users for pay-to-play activities pursuant to the parties' current publishing agreement. Valve games such as Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and the recently released Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike: Source are all popular in cyber cafés.
In addition, Judge Zilly ruled in favor of the Valve motion regarding the contractual limitation of liability, allowing Valve to recover copyright damages for any infringement as allowed by law without regard to the publishing agreement's limitation of liability clause.
"We're happy the court has affirmed the meaning of our publishing contract. This is good news for Valve and its cyber café partners around the world," said Gabe Newell, founder and CEO of Valve. "We continue to add value to our program and we look forward to working with cafés to get them signed up and offering Valve's latest games to their customers."
The Valve Cyber Café Program is the only legal way to use Valve games in your cyber café or gaming center. There are currently thousands of cyber cafés participating in the program throughout the world.
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Bei der Cyber-Caffee Lizenz muß man pro Computer eine monatliche Gebühr abführen, hat dafür aber Zugriff auf sämtliche Valve-Spiele.
30.11.2004, 18:28 Uhr
