The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a $4.4 million arbitration award against AimJunkies.com for copyright and trademark abuse involving “Destiny 2,” a video game. The decision came down Monday and backs an earlier ruling in favor of Bungie, the Bellevue, Washington developer of the game.
The owners of AimJunkies and AimJunkies.com were sued by Bungie last year after it had just been acquired. The arbitration ruling didn’t happen until a year later, in response to a federal jury decision in Seattle ordering AimJunkies to pay $63,000 for similar copyright lawsuits. AimJunkies disputed the $4.4 million arbitration award, arguing that Philip Mann, its lawyer, was precluded from conducting effective cross-examination of Bungie engineer Edward Kaiser by retired Washington State Court of Appeals Judge Ronald Cox, who was the arbitrator. According to AimJunkies, this limitation prevented them from attacking Kaiser’s credibility on key points.
In any case, Mann had plenty of opportunity to cross-examine Kaiser, according to the Ninth Circuit, and if the judge originally cut off questioning then alternative approaches could have been taken. The court points out that Mann could have restated the questions again, used earlier transcripts or read them into the record when issues were at stake.
