Quote:Update (01/25/10): After a period of silence something is happening again. We received a bill of indictment from the public prosecutor. Therein we are accused of having illegally copied, distributed or broadcasted a work without the agreement of the holder of rights. The contained report of the facts of the case is in our opinion quite dubious to say the least.
A Korean attestor is named to have prepared an incriminating expertise for which he seemingly was granted access to all of our confiscated data.
Our lawyers will now again request access to the records so we can review the actual evidence (including the expertise of the Korean guy) and decide if we want to name any other attestors or request hearing of evidences.
The lawsuit takes place at the juvenile court (since one of us is still younger than 21) of the Amtsgericht Neunkirchen which is the lowest level court possible in Germany.
(Please note: Contrary to all rumors this marks the beginning of the first lawsuit against us. Everything that happened before was just part of preliminary proceedings. There has been no kind of judgment so far.)

Combattente Wrote:I really wonder what the progress of this will be (who will win the lawsuit, etc.).

I wonder if NEXON really can win the lawsuit.

Devil Wrote:lol, this is gonna be a total fail process for Nexon, since Odin didn't steal anything from Nexon but coded the whole server software themselves.

I really would like to see the evidence that Nexon wants to present to the court since they still claim those guys COPIED code from them and with that that would be the copyright breach...

I smell a HUGE financial compensation towards those guys from Nexon if Nexon fails here... 2 years and still no hard evidence given by Nexon... Even most murder trials are faster... :')

Rob Wrote:The point if this argument is moot. I think Nexon should be thinking if it's really worth it. Of course, it would set a precedent fot international law to base other lawsuits, but it's more money wasted in something minor that has no impact on the PServer community as it is today.

Devil Wrote:lol, this is gonna be a total fail process for Nexon, since Odin didn't steal anything from Nexon but coded the whole server software themselves.

I really would like to see the evidence that Nexon wants to present to the court since they still claim those guys COPIED code from them and with that that would be the copyright breach...

I smell a HUGE financial compensation towards those guys from Nexon if Nexon fails here... 2 years and still no hard evidence given by Nexon... Even most murder trials are faster... :')

Cancambo Wrote:It isn't the OdinMS source that is in question. It is that Matze/Serpendiem took MapleStory.exe, modified it, and redistributed it as OdinMS.exe.

butterfλi Wrote:Well, OdinMS "stole" the concept of Maple Story. Obviously, they didn't steal the source code. Reverse engineering is a touchy topic lol.

Devil Wrote:Hmmm interesting, how are they gonna prove which person modified and redistributed it? For all we know it was some Chinese hacker who did that... Afaik, Odin never hosted those files on their server, nor linked to them...

P.S. This would also mean that Nexon gave up on making the the pserver code itself look illegal... since it was truly home coded and they finally found that out 2 years later...

butterfλi Wrote:I think the more Nexon push forward with this, the more the threat becomes a reality. Every now and then, Nexon puts some delicious pasta in their announcements warning people to stay away from pservers. Of course the pserver community isn't dead. In fact, many pservers that are existing now are v75, which isn't far behind from the official server at all. So that's saying people are still running and developing pservers and Nexon is still losing money from it. I guess by periodically pushing forward with OdinMS lawsuit, people are reminded from time to time that this is serious. Or maybe this dragged out lawsuit is just typical Nexon handy work, idk.

Takebacker Wrote:I'm interested in the consequences for nexon if they fail here.

Fiel Wrote:Also, Nexon is suing Kryptodev. And GameKiller was DMCA'd (again!). Yeah, Nexon is still active legally.

BombsAway Wrote:What did they do?

Fiel Wrote:OdinMS distributed their source code. All other PServers are based on that source code. Therefore, OdinMS is responsible for the creation of all PServers. (Okay, so this isn't entirely true - their source was stolen then leaked, so Odin distributed theirs anyway. The fact remains that they did distribute it themselves, leak or no leak)
OdinMS did distribute a new EXE which connected to their server instead of Nexon's.
OdinMS ran its own PServer.

These three things are pretty big all together. There are other users who have distributed modifications to the client to allow it to connect to a different server (spudgy, Kiki's DLL), but you don't see Nexon going after them? I think it's this big trio of things that caused Nexon to go after them.

Also, Nexon is suing Kryptodev. And GameKiller was DMCA'd (again!). Yeah, Nexon is still active legally.

Fiel Wrote:All other PServers are based on that source code

Fiel Wrote:OdinMS distributed their source code.
-> Publishing own written code falls under the freedom of press.

OdinMS did distribute a new EXE which connected to their server instead of Nexon's.
->That's the main question here... did they really do that and who -exactly- did that then? It was never on their site / forum. Nexon has to -prove- it was distributed by the guys from Odin with -hard- evidence. And -that- IS going to be a very hard case to crack, if not impossible...

OdinMS ran its own PServer
-> Running own written server software is not illegal, as long as the server software itself is not copied from another source.