Writer claims Assassin's Creed stole his idea, sues for $5+ million

[Spooky]

Ubisoft's four-part (with a fifth on the way) Assassin's Creed series is one of the most popular game franchises around, but at least one person is not impressed. A sci-fi novelist just filed a lawsuit asking for up to $5.25 million from Ubisoft, claiming that the developer lifted one of the game's key concepts from one of his self-published novels.

In Assassin's Creed, the main character accesses the memories and even the assassin abilities of his ancestors through a device called Animus, the franchise's key sci-fi component. Author John L. Beiswenger filed a hefty copyright infringement suit against Ubisoft Monday in a Pennsylvania district court, claiming that the entire idea of the Animus was lifted from his 2003 novel, Link.

"In Link, the Plaintiff's plot includes the conception and creation of a device and process whereby ancestral memories can be accessed, recalled, relived and re-experienced by the user," the lawsuit says.

It then goes on to copy lengthy excerpts from Beiswenger's book, like this one:

"If John Wilkes Booth fathered a child after he assassinated Lincoln, and we found a descendant alive today, we could place Booth at the scene and perhaps smell the gunpowder." "Ancestral memories?" "As far back as you want."
Based on these similarities Beiswenger is aiming to earn compensation from each of the four Assassin's Creed games released so far, along with all spinoff material, including guidebooks, comic books and other merchandise. So, does he have a case?

According to Mark Methenitis, a Dallas attorney who blogs about the legal issues of the gaming world at Law of the Game, probably not.

"The level of comparison they're trying to make would be along the lines of both Back to the Future and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure have time machines as plot devices, so one must be infringing the other," he said. "A copyright does not protect abstract ideas at that level."

So it looks like Ubisoft will end up in the clear, but that hasn't stopped the fan rage. Several new review entries have popped up on the Amazon item page for Link just in the last day or so, nearly all of them bashing the novel and bemoaning the possibility that the lawsuit could delay the release of Assassin's Creed III later this year. That's probably not a worry even worth having at this point, but the flood of comments to the page is proof that you don't want to mess with hardcore gamers. Just ask BioWare.

http://blastr.com/2012/04/writer-claims-assassins-c.php

[Spooky]

After doing a bit of reading on Mr. Beiswenger's book Link I don't think Anyone at Ubisoft even knew his book existed.

It's got a 2 star rating at Amazon and cost $18.95.

http://www.amazon.com/Link-Beiswenger-John-L/dp/0741413485

Some nice comments. (most seems to have come after the suit was announced)

The truly astonishing hypothesis, developed by Search International, suggests that at the functional center of the nucleus of every cell is an atemporal Particle of zero mass and infinite capacity for memory a biological singularity. The same Particle is a component of every cell in the body. It is the "fabric of the soul."

The only thing "astonishing" is that this dribble even got published

On a scale of good, bad and mediocre writing, Beiswenger's Link ranks so low that it would be an improvement to call it bad writing. His sentence structure is absurd, and his choice of vocabulary is laughable. Take the second paragraph on the first page for example:

"He could hear the first coach on the shore shouting encouragement, but even this caused him to double his grip on the paddle, since the movement of her voice was clearly accelerating away from him to his back as his boat moved faster toward the experience."

This sentence is typical of many throughout the book (i.e. too long and full of awkward phrases). If you value your time and money, don't buy this book or even read it.

Everything you need to know about this book is written on the cover: "What better place to look beyond than through the mind of one who saw to that point but no further". What does that even mean? I can't believe that this book was originally written in English. Read the product description for more examples of the atrocious writing.