Call of Duty: a lawsuit for the rights on Operator Mara breaks out

What day would it be if there weren't some scandal in the world of video games? This seems to be the case with "Mara“, A new character introduced in the Battle Pass di Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, chapter released in 2019. This Tuesday, in fact, Clayton Haugen (photographer, videographer and writer) filed a Texas court lawsuit against Activision to infringement of copyright. Haugen accuses the US company of creating its new operator based on Janus falls, a character created in 2017 by the same writer for a short story called November Renaissance. But how did it get to this point? What basis does Clayton Haugen have to sue a giant like Activision?

Although he had registered the copyright for his story as early as 2013, Mr. Haugen created the character of Cade Janus only during 2017, with the collaboration of the streamer. Alex Zedra and a team of makeup artists, both specially hired for the purpose. The result was a photographic set (the copyright of which was registered just in December 2020) which was first published on social media and then sent, as an attachment to the story, to various film companies, in the hope of making the short story a real feature film.

The accusation is based that not only Activision would have used the photos, but also hired the same streamer and the same makeup team in order to reproduce the features of Cade and scan them for the title, all under a confidentiality agreement (NDA) to avoid lawsuits like the one that is just arising these days. We do not know to date how this legal action will end, but in the meantime we refer you to our article on the new update of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War which will be released today.