South Korea\'s Supreme Court has finalised a copyright and trade secrets dispute between Nexon and Ironmace over the game Dark and Darker by dismissing appeals from both sides and upholding a lower court ruling. The court confirmed trade secrets infringement involving materials from Nexon\'s P3 project but rejected copyright infringement claims and a request to ban the service. It upheld damages of 5.8 billion won and noted a separate criminal trial is continuing.

South Korea\'s game industry is watching a Supreme Court ruling due on April 30 in the dispute between Nexon and Ironmace over \"Dark and Darker\". The industry focus is on how far courts recognise non-public development outputs accumulated during development and how they separate copyright from trade secrets. Lower courts rejected copyright infringement but upheld trade secret infringement. They also rejected a request to ban the game’s service, citing an expired protection period.