Besieged Disney CCG maker brands suit against it 'the legal equivalent of alchemy' as it plays the hotshot lawyer card
Ravensburger, the game company being sued over accusations of «stealing and copying» a game from rival Upper Deck in order to repackage it as Disney's much-hyped upcoming collectible card game Disney Lorcana, is bringing out the big guns.
On the one hand, Ravensburger has put forward a motion to the US District Court for the Southern District of California rubbishing Upper Deck's lawsuit outright, calling it «the legal equivalent of alchemy» and asking the court to dismiss the case out of hand.
On the other—you know, just in case that doesn't work—it's reminded everyone of just the kind of legal advice it has in its corner. In a statement to ComicBook.com that accompanied the court filing, Brian Lewis—former general counsel for Wizards of the Coast who helped turn Magic: The Gathering into a global phenomenon back in the '90s—said that Upper Deck's case «appears to be more of a PR stunt than a genuine legal dispute,» adding that he hoped the case would be «dismissed outright» before anyone had to set foot in a courtroom.
If you don't quite remember, Upper Deck is accusing its former contract worker Ryan Miller of taking ideas from a game he worked on at the company over to his job at Ravensburger, porting them wholesale into Lorcana and letting that game hit the market first. Even more dramatically, Upper Deck says Ravensburger «aided and encouraged» him, in the hopes of profiting from the «stolen intellectual property». It wants financial compensation and—perhaps more scary for Ravensburger and Disney—an injunction on Lorcana's August release date.
You won't be surprised to learn that Ravensburger isn't quite on board with that description of events. In its motion for dismissal, the company gets downright excoriating
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