NCSoft lost a first-instance lawsuit it filed against Kakao Games and RedLab Games to stop alleged copyright infringement. The court ruled that major elements of Lineage W cited by NCSoft are not subject to copyright protection.

The legal community said on July 13 that the Seoul Central District Court's Civil Division 62, presided over by Judge Lee Hyun-seok (이현석), ruled on July 9 against NCSoft in its lawsuit seeking an injunction and other relief against RedLab Games and Kakao Games over alleged copyright infringement.

The lawsuit began after NCSoft claimed in February 2024 that the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) ROM: Remember Of Majesty, published by Kakao Games and developed by RedLab Games, copied multiple parts of Lineage W's content and systems.

NCSoft said key elements of Lineage W, inherited from Lineage M, have originality that distinguishes them from other games, including the transformation and magic doll system, equipment enhancement system, item collection system, PvP system and various visual expression formats. It argued that these elements and their combination constitute works protected under copyright law and that ROM used them without permission.

NCSoft also sought damages, saying the elements were outcomes created through the company's substantial investment and effort, and that developing and offering a game by imitating them constitutes misappropriation of results under the Act on the Prevention of Unfair Competition and Protection of Trade Secrets.

Kakao Games and RedLab Games countered that the elements cited by NCSoft are not concrete expressions protected by copyright law but merely ideas that amount to game rules. They also said many of the elements existed in other games before the launch of Lineage W and were only borrowed and combined, making it difficult to 인정 originality, and that the components of the two games are not substantially similar.

The court accepted the arguments by Kakao Games and RedLab Games. It ruled that the transformation and magic doll system, equipment enhancement system, item collection system and PvP system, even if they have originality, fall within the realm of ideas rather than expressions protected by copyright law and therefore cannot be protected.

The court acknowledged originality in some of the visual expression formats. It said, however, it was difficult to see the result of combining these elements organically as having a creative individuality that distinguishes it from prior games. For these reasons, it said it was difficult to find that ROM's release and offering infringed NCSoft's copyright not only in individual elements of Lineage W but also in their combination.

Some elements the court recognized as protected by copyright, namely the grade 표시 in the transformation and magic doll system and the design of shop NPCs, were found to be similar to those in ROM. The court nonetheless did not find copyright infringement, citing that these elements do not account for a large portion of the overall game. It said this followed a Supreme Court precedent requiring consideration of both the quantitative and qualitative weight of the copied expression within the original work as a whole.

The claim of unfair competition was also rejected. The court said that if selecting, modifying, arranging and combining elements from NCSoft's prior games were immediately recognized as NCSoft's "results" on that basis alone, it could produce an unfair outcome by granting NCSoft exclusive rights over elements already known and in the public domain. It added that for such selection, modification, arrangement and combination to be recognized as NCSoft's results, they would have needed to have a reputation or customer-attracting power among users, but no supporting materials were submitted.

Based on this, the court said it was difficult to 인정 that Kakao Games and RedLab Games used them without permission in a way that runs counter to fair commercial practices or the competitive order, and it dismissed all of NCSoft's claims.