Lawsuit Update: Jury Finds No Copyright Infringement of Wrestler’s Poster in Black Ops 4 Poster
Huffman v. Activision Publ’g, Inc.
2:19-cv-00050
Filed February 12, 2019
Professional wrestler Booker T. Huffman (“Huffman”), who wrestles as the character, “G.I. Bro” sued Activision Publishing, Inc. (“Activision”) for copyright infringement. Huffman alleged a promotional poster for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 infringed on his G.I. Bro poster.
With a simple checkmark, after a four-day trial, the jury found that Activision did not infringe on Huffman’s copyright.
This means that, as it stands, Huffman will not be seeing any monetary damages from this lawsuit. Huffman will likely file a motion for judgment as a matter of law (JMOL), meaning that he asks the judge to reverse the jury verdict as being unsupported by the the evidence in the case, but that is unlikely to succeed. Huffman could also try to appeal, but thanks to the Seventh Amendment courts give great deference to jury verdicts, so such verdicts are difficult to overcome.
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