Months after Riot Games sued Moonton because of the latter’s MOBA game Mobile Legends, the US District Court of California has dismissed Riot Games’ copyright lawsuit. The decision was made in favor of Moonton.
According to the court documents, US District Judge Michael Fitzgerald said the lawsuit against Moonton is better suited to take place in China than in the US because Tencent, the parent company of Riot Games, is based in China.
“It remains unfair to allow Riot and Tencent to bring a two-front war against Moonton unless and until Tencent decides to show up on both battlefields,” Fitzgerald said.
In addition, the court document explains that Riot Games and Tencent allow each other to freely use their copyrighted work in their games, which brings confusion as to which game elements are made by Riot, and which ones are made by Tencent.
“For years, the parties have been litigating highly related copyright claims in China that raise many of the same issues that Riot is now trying to re-raise in the U.S.,” Van Nest & Peters litigator and Moonton lawyer Ajay Krishnan said in a statement. “It would have been duplicative, inefficient, and wholly unfair to proceed with this case in the U.S., where Moonton would lack access to key evidence and witnesses.”