There where few court appointments since the last legal update,
lets give a short overview:
Munich, LG I - countersuit of Blizzard vs Bossland GmbH
Main Issue - intice of contract breach
Here the court had to decide weither there was a contract between Blizzard aus us or not, while on our suit the court declined that a contract exists, on the countersuit the court tended to believe that there was a contract. This should be all needed to know, as next step here is the appeal to a higher court.
Leipzig, LG I - suit of Blizzard vs me personally
Main Issue - private liability
Here we had 2 hearings over the time, and while the court could not see any private liability during the whole hearings, we where really surprised, how the court moved its oppinion, based on the last 5 minutes of the last hearing. There the court, listening for hours to Blizzard lawyers, visible bugged because of the many repeats and repeats why i am an shady person, decided to ask Blizzard lawyers why they do not simply withdraw the usage of the licence of usage to me and Bossland GmbH. So with the end of the hearing we where pretty sure, that we will win this case, but weeks later when the written judgement arrived, it said basically this:
Bossland(me) is not liable at all, bla .. bla bla, BUT since we told you to end the licence with Bossland, now Bossland is liable from that day on, for copyright infringement based on the usage of WOW and or D3 through him and or his employees. Obviously a judge has to stay neutral, and what he did, we do not agree with, so this ruling also has been appealed to a higher court.
And as you already know, there where this 2 cases on the higher court in Hamburg, Hanseatisches Oberlandesgericht.
OLG Hamburg - suit Blizzard vs Bossland GmbH
Main issue - Diablo 3 Auction houses
While we got an interim injunction, that forbids us sales in Germany, it was send to the court before we even had a product on the market, and the court accepted it, the lower court got all his arguments based on a probable affect of our bots on the auction houses. And thats how they decided. We appealed, and now since the main reason was gone, the auction houses, we believed we would have a better chance to prove our point.
We where thinking wrong, as in an interim injunction you basically do not need to prove anything, just to make the court believe, it is this way, the court agreed with Blizzard. This means that we still can not sell Demonbuddy in Germany. Now the interim injunction went to its highest appeal and is over therefore, this makes the way free for the normal case, which should be apointed somewhen next year, there Blizzard has to prove any actual damages.
The interesting fact here tho was that the judges do not belive that there is any intice of contract breach.
OLG Hamburg - suit Blizzard vs Bossland GmbH the second
Main issue - World of Warcraft fairplay/contract breach/infair competition
We had 2 hearings one after the next one this day, 10th September 2014. So with WoW it was nearly the same, the court did not see any intice of contract breach, but believed, obviously based on no evidence, and i mean no evidence, if i describe comments on Amazon and Forum Posts, this is what Blizzard added to show the court how bad bots are, not Demonbuddy just bots, cheats, hacks, dupes. However we could not win this case either. But we have a chance that the judges will allow us to go into appeal to the Supreme Court of Germany
All in all, what we believe is, that we can or could not convince the judges of the courts, that what we do is not shady nor illegal. It is a service that users need and it does not harm the games, it even makes them better and brings Blizzard even higher revenues. Meanwhile our lawyers joined a bigger law firm, we have now a manpower of 3 lawyers dedicated to our cases.
But in the end this is all about contract breach - we do not see any contract between uns and Blizzard, about incide of contract breach between Blizzard and their customers - we do not see how we would have forced anyone to do it, unfair competition - we do not see how the competition is unfair at all, we do not see any competition to begin with, since once you bought the product of Blizzyrd, only then you think about buying a bot or not, by then Blizzard made his money, especially with Diablo 3, but also most likely with WoW the bot users are even convinced to stay longer in the game and pay therefore even more to Blizzard with the monthly subs.
The written rulings about the last 2 cases, should reach us somewhen around the first week of November 2014. We have not won anything until now, but the alligations topple with each step we make to an higher court, more and more of the charges Blizzard made in their suit get dropped by the courts.
Ich wünsche hiermit weiterhin viel Glück und Erfolg.