IP Newsletter | Spring 2016
	TRADEMARK, DESIGN, COPYRIGHT & UNFAIR COMPETITION
	Copying of Game Rules Violates the "Catch-All" Provision of the UCPA
	King.com Ltd. ("King"), the developer and distributor of the "Farm Heroes Saga" game, filed suit in the Seoul Central District Court in 2014 against Avocado Entertainment Inc. ("Avocado"), the developer and distributor of a similar game called "Forest Mania." King sought an injunction against copyright infringement and unfair competition by Avocado, as well as damages. On October 30, 2015, the court held that Avocado copied certain game rules from Farm Heroes Saga, and that this constituted a violation of the Unfair Competition Prevention and Trade Secrets Act (the "UCPA"). The court specifically ruled that the copying was unfair competition under the "catch-all" provision of Article 2(1)j of the UCPA, which prohibits acts of "infringing another person's right to profit by using for one's own business, without authorization, any achievement of that other person that was the result of substantial investment or effort, in a manner contravening fair commercial trade practices or orderly competition." Factual Background Farm Heroes Saga and Forest Mania are both "match 3"-type games where a player earns points by aligning three or more matching tiles vertically or horizontally. While King released Farm Heroes Saga worldwide in April 2013, and launched a mobile version in Korea in December 2013, the game did not achieve wide release in Korea until it was launched on the KakaoTalk game platform on June 10, 2014. Avocado released its Forest Mania game on the KakaoTalk platform in Korea on February 11, 2014. King claimed that Avocado's game copied seven unique game rules from Farm Heroes Saga, including rules for earning bonus points, and rules by which a player could win levels by exhausting the energy of an antagonist (the "Special Rules"). King also claimed that Avocado copied specific features of the game interface, as shown below.
	Feature Farm Heroes Saga Forest Mania Map View Nodes Goal Notice Bar Instruction Bar at Bottom of Game Interface Tiles Special Tiles Game Board Layout
	Court Decision The court rejected King's copyright infringement claim, finding that game rules per se are not protectable because they are only an idea (and not an expression of an idea), and that even though the interface features of Farm Heroes Saga are protected under the Copyright Act, the characters, colors, and game effects of Forest Mania were sufficiently different from those of Farm Heroes Saga to avoid infringing King's copyright. However, the court upheld King's unfair competition claim, finding that King had invested substantial effort and resources, including money, technology and know-how, into developing the Special Rules, and that the Special Rules were unique and not found in other match-3 games. Thus, the court ruled that Farm Heroes Saga, with its Special Rules, was achieved "through King.com's considerable investment and effort" even though King had not created a completely new type of game. The court further found that Avocado had blatantly copied the Special Rules given that Avocado released Forest Mania in Korea barely 10 months after the worldwide release of Farm Heroes Saga, even though it was technically released before Farm Heroes Saga was widely available in Korea. In view of the above, the court ruled that Avocado had produced a copycat game in violation of the "catch-all" provision of the UCPA, and granted an injunction and damages to King. The court noted that unfair competition is distinct from and broader than copyright infringement, since copyright infringement is based solely on similarities in the way features are specifically expressed, whereas an unfair competitive act can exist simply due to similarities between game rules. This is the first case in Korea to apply the UCPA "catch-all" provision to prevent copying in the game industry, and seems to be part of a recent trend of Korean courts being increasingly willing to expand the scope of protection against intellectual property infringement through unfair competition laws. The case is currently on appeal to the Seoul High Court.
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