Riot sues Mobile Legends: Bang Bang maker for reasons you can probably guess

pcgamer.com:

League of Legends studio Riot Games is suing Mobile Legends: Bang Bang developer Shanghai Moonton Technology Company, saying the studio is engaged in a «deliberate and sustained campaign to free ride on Riot’s highly valuable rights in the mobile videogame League of Legends: Wild Rift.»

The lawsuit, available in full from Polygon, is actually rooted in a five-year-old beef between Riot and Moonton over Mobile Legends: Bang Bang and another game called Mobile Legends: 5v5 MOBA. In that lawsuit, Riot said Moonton «developed and distributed a succession of mobile games designed to trade off Riot’s well-known and valuable intellectual property,» and that it took aggressive steps to camouflage its illegal activity: After Riot notified Google about 5v5 MOBA, for instance, Moonton removed it from the Google Play Store, and then immediately released a new game, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang.

«However, Mobile Legends: Bang bang was not a new game at all, but in fact was the exact same game as Mobile Legends: 5v5 MOBA, with some modest changes,» Riot claimed in the 2017 suit, available from Dot Esports. «This ploy of 'hide the ball' was part of Moonton’s deliberate business strategy, designed to hamper Riot’s ability to protect its intellectual property. Meanwhile, even though Moonton now has received multiple infringement notices from Riot, it continues to infringe and to profit from its infringement.»

That case was dismissed after a California court ruled that the matter would be more appropriately pursued in China. Riot's parent company Tencent then got involved and won a $2.9 million judgment against Xu Zhenhua, the CEO of Moonton. Mobile Legends: Bang Bang remained available, however, which brings us to the latest lawsuit.

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