Sony Computer Entertainment America and “God of War” creator David Jaffe are in a bit of legal hot water. GamePolitics has reported that the company and its former employee are facing a patent infringement suit filed by two residents of Davis, California.

The details, sans the legal mumbo jumbo, are located after the jump.

Jonathan Bissoon-Dath and Jennifer Barrette-Herzog claim that SCEA and Jaffe essentially stole the idea for “God of War” from writings penned by Bissoon-Dath and a map created by Barrette-Herzog for those works. The plaintiffs compiled “seven pages” of similarities, which include “elements of plot, character relationships, themes, settings, mood, pace and dialogue.”

GamePolitics has listed four of the alleged infringements. They include the Blades of Chaos and the fate of the main character’s family.

In “God of War,” Kratos receives the Blades of Chaos, which are “two massive, glowing, sword-like blades” from Ares. Bissoon-Dath described an excerpt from his work in which Zeus’ “hands MORPH into two massive swords that glow like light sabers.”

Also, the main character in Bissoon-Dath’s work experiences guilt after his “family is hacked to death in a one-room building in a small peaceful village.” This is somewhat similar to a scene from “God of War,” in which Kratos murders his own wife and child while under the influence of Ares. However, whereas Kratos was directly responsible for his family’s demise, “the Champion” from Bissoon-Dath’s piece did not play the part of Grim Reaper. Oh, and by the way, in classical mythology, Hercules killed his family in a drunken rage. Maybe Bissoon-Dath copied that?

SCEA and Jaffe, not content to have their reputations trashed, have rejected the plaintiffs’ claims. GamePolitics wrote that “responses filed on behalf of SCEA and Jaffe” claimed “that some of the plaintiff’s work (presumably the Greek mythology) lies in the public domain” and “the plaintiff’s delineation of specific alleged similarities are ‘inaccurate, incomplete, abstracted and/or misleading.’”

Personally, I find this suit to be a bit fishy. Bissoon-Dath and Barrette-Herzog claim that they sent their work to Sony Pictures in 2002. “God of War” was released in March 2005.  That was more than three years ago. Since then, “God of War II” and “God of War: Chains of Olympus” have been released for the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable, respectively. Did the plaintiffs just stumble upon the original game in a Blockbuster earlier this year? What took them so long to file a suit in U.S. District Court in California? It seems like Bissoon-Dath and Barrette-Herzog are more interested in a nice payday than the alleged copyright infringement. I could be wrong, but a quick analysis of my bull**** meter suggests that I view this suit with skepticism.

Also, my annoyance meter is off the chart. How dare the plaintiffs force me to type their unnecessarily long names numerous times for this story. Perhaps I should have just called them person A and person B. That would have been much easier.

Source: GamePolitics via Joystiq

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