Last month, Upper Deck announced they would be filing a lawsuit against Ravensburger, the developer of Disney’s upcoming trading card game (TCG), Lorcana. Now, Ravensburger has responded to the lawsuit and didn’t pull any punches.
According to the complaint document, former Upper Deck employee, Ryan Miller, signed and breached two contracts while working for the company. As a “Work for Hire” lead game designer, Miller allegedly “attended the 2018 Gaming Summit” and helped to cultivate the game concept for Upper Deck’s card game, Rush of Ikorr. According to the document, Upper Deck agreed to pay Miller to “create and design a TCG that could be played both in physical and digital form.” Upon completing his contractual obligations, Miller’s contract was terminated, at which point he began working with Lorcana developer, Ravensburger.
While Ravensburger denied these allegations immediately, they have now also released a formal response to the lawsuit, calling it the “legal equivalent of alchemy”. The full 34-page response not only calls for the case to be thrown out, but also notes they’ve brought on Brian Lewis – the first in-house lawyer for Wizards of the Coast (WotC) – as their legal advisor for this case. Famous for his work defending Magic: The Gathering and other TCGs, Lewis specializes in trademark, copyright, and licensing issues, and has stated that he is confident Ravensburger has an “extremely strong case”.
While we respect the valid intellectual property rights of others, this appears to be more of a PR stunt than a genuine legal dispute.
Brian Lewis
For more information, including the full 34-page document, read the original article from Polygon.