by Stacy Jones on Sep 06, 2010
Developer Jagex has been pushing for a preliminary injunction against Impulse Software over its Impulse iBot, used for botting in Jagex's MMORPG, RuneScape. The software in questions is a program that completes tasks and levels up characters without the need for players to actually play themselves and is defined by many publishers and developers as cheating.
Unfortunately for Jagex, a U.S. court has denied its request for the injunction following its filing of a February lawsuit against the Florida-based company for alleged violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and copyright and trademark infringement. The court denied the injunction and was not convinced that Jagex would suffer irreparable harm, showing once again that courts know very little about the functionality of online worlds.
The bad news did not stop there for Jagex as the court reviewing their allegations also believes it is "unlikely to succeed" with its RuneScape copyright claims since Jagex has not made all the necessary copyright registrations for the game in the U.S., a mistake that could prove to be a fatal error in Jagex's pursuit to stop the botting software company.
Check out the full story at Gamasutra for more details.
Update: Jagex Claims Victory Against RuneScape Bot Developer