Is Dead Rising a Dawn of the Dead Rip-Off?

The answer, according to a U.S. magistrate judge, is a resounding no.

You may recall some months back that Richard Rubenstein's MKR Group, the company that owns the rights to George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, had brought a lawsuit against Capcom, the makers of Dead Rising. Their contention was that the zombie horror video game represented a direct copyright infringement on their intellectual property, since--like DOTD--it is set in a shopping mall and features humans fighting to survive a zombie uprising.

However, Judge Richard Seeborg, according to Gamespot, has ruled that the game is sufficiently different from the movie that no copyright infringement is evident. To quote the good judge:

"[MKR] has not identified any similarity between Dead Rising and any protected element of Dawn of the Dead. Rather, the few similarities MKR has alleged are driven by the wholly unprotectable concept of humans battling zombies in a mall during a zombie outbreak."

Bet Judge Seeborg never thought he'd be writing those words back in his law school days.

Furthermore, the judge determined that Dead Rising possesses none of the social commentary inherent in Dawn of the Dead. Yay, score one for mindless zombie killing!

Wait, You Mean Zombies in a Shopping Mall Has Already Been Done?

Apparently that's news to Capcom, the video game developer that had the nerve to act surprised when Richard Rubenstein--owner of the intellectual property of Dawn of the Dead--sued them last Monday for copyright infringement over their game Dead Rising.

Capcom tried in vain to block the lawsuit, claiming that the concept of zombies in a mall was not something that could be copyrighted. But Rubenstein's MKR Group took it further, declaring that, "Both works are dark comedies. Both works provided thoughtful social commentary on the 'mall culture' zeitgeist, in addition to serving up a sizable portion of sensationalistic violence."

I was wondering how long it would take for this to happen. George Romero even mentioned the alarming similarity during his recent Opie & Anthony interview. Rubenstein owns the rights to both Dawn and Day of the Dead--in fact I believe it was a dispute between he and Romero over the ownership of the concept that partly created such difficulty in getting a fourth Dead film made for so many years.

Rubinstein is known for being quite the litigious fellow--going after fan websites and that sort of thing. But it's hard not to see his point on this one. The game is clearly inspired 100% by Dawn, and it looks like Capcom is trying to get away with adapting the concept without having to pay to officially license the property.