After five years, the long-running trial has come to an end.by Andrew Goldfarb
May 30, 2012
Epic has emerged victorious from its long-running court case with Silicon Knights. According to a
tweet from Epic’s Mark Rein, the jury found for Epic on all counts.
The trial first began
in 2007 when Silicon Knights served Epic with a lawsuit alleging that Unreal Engine 3 did not work as promised. At the time, Silicon Knights president Denis Dyack wrote that Epic was “unable or unwilling” to fix the engine’s problems and accused Epic of using licensing fees to develop Gears of War rather than working on Unreal, and said that the technical problems forced them to develop a separate engine, making
Too Human significantly more expensive to produce.
Today, Epic said the following in a statement: “The jury rejected Silicon Knights' claim that Epic breached its Unreal Engine 3 license agreement with Silicon Knights. The jury also found in Epic's favor on all of its counterclaims, namely that Silicon Knights breached the license agreement, misappropriated Epic's trade secrets, and infringed Epic's copyrights in the Unreal Engine 3 code. The jury awarded Epic damages totaling $4.45 million. Epic has 30 days in which to file a request to the court for reimbursement of attorneys' fees and costs. The court previously had thrown out Silicon Knights' fraud claims after nine days of testimony.”
"We are delighted with the jury's verdict and all of the hard work done by the Hunton & Williams legal team,” Epic general counsel Jay Andrews added.
In the five years since the trial began, additional information has slowly
emerged. As the release of Too Human approached in 2008, Silicon Knights sought a court order to block Epic from viewing code for the game, as the company had developed a proprietary 3D camera system and was seeking a patent. Epic eventually
counter-sued and the case went to trial earlier this year. Earlier this month, a judge ruled that Silicon Knights could earn only one dollar if the case had fallen in their favor.
In the wake of today's verdict, the future of Silicon Knights remains uncertain. The developer last released X-Men: Destiny, which
received a 5.5 from IGN last year. We've reached out to the studio for its response to the verdict and will update with any comment we receive.
Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following him on Twitter or IGN.
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