Spry Fox has announced that it will file a lawsuit against 6Waves Lolapps. They are asserting that developer’s Yeti Town is infringing on the copyright of Spry Fox’s Triple Town.

“We (Spry Fox) have filed a copyright infringement suit in federal court against 6Waves Lolapps in response to their release of Yeti Town, their blatant copy of Triple Town. This was a difficult decision for Danc and I,” writes David Edery, CEO of Spry Fox. “We are not enthusiastic about the prospect of spending our time in court as opposed to making games. And in general, we believe that only in the most extreme circumstances should a video game developer resort to legal action in order to defend their creative works — the last thing our industry needs is frivolous lawsuits. Unfortunately, it is our opinion that 6waves has behaved in a reprehensible and illegal manner, and we can not, in good conscience, ignore it.”

The developer cited specific quotes from the media that state the similarities between Yeti Town and Triple Town. They cite specific in game values and prices, items and UI elements and they don’t stop there.

“What most people don’t know is that 6waves was in confidential (under NDA) negotiations with us to publish Triple Town at the exact same time that they were actively copying Triple Town,” added Edery. “We gave 6waves private access to Triple Town when it was still in closed beta, months before the public was exposed to the game. We believed those negotiations were ongoing, and we continued to give private information to 6waves, until 6waves’ Executive Director of Business Development sent us a message via Facebook on the day Yeti Town was published in which he suddenly broke off negotiations and apologized for the nasty situation. His message can be found in its entirety in the body of our legal complaint.”

“It’s bad enough to rip off another company, he added. “To do so while you are pumping them for private information (first, our game design ideas, and later, after the game was launched on Facebook, our private revenue and retention numbers) is profoundly unethical by any measure.”

For it’s part, Lolapps does not consider it’s game an infringement, saying, “Lolapps is disappointed that David Edery has chosen to file a lawsuit, and believes his claims are factually inaccurate. We respect others IP and did nothing to violate any contracts our team had in place. The copyright infringement claims are unjustified.”

Source: edery.org