Capcom is facing a lawsuit from a designer who alleges that the Japanese gaming giant had used numerous copyrighted photos taken by her to design environments, logos, and other assets for various Resident Evil and Devil May Cry games. A lot of the evidence/comparisons in the filing are pretty damning, such as the glass shattering pattern in the Resident Evil 4 logo being a direct match for a photo that plaintiff Judy Juracek had snapped at a mansion located in Newport, Rhode Island. Capcom may have to pay $12 million for a single count of copyright infringement, as well as $2,500 to $25,000 for each used photograph.
In the lawsuit, she alleged that Capcom used photos from her copyrighted book, Surfaces, in multiple games, including Resident Evil 4, Devil May Cry, and other Capcom games. Surfaces is a collection of 1,200 photographs of textures that Juracek photographed herself; the book is intended to be used for “visual research” for artists, architects, and designers, according to the book’s description.
Source: Polygon