Sam Varghese
Thursday, 17 September 2009 05:57
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A law firm in Sydney, acting for the Chinese owners of the massive multiplayer online game Evony, has filed a case against a British blogger for alleged defamation.
The firm, Warren Mckeon Dickson, said in a media release that it had filed suit in the NSW Supreme Court against Bruce Everiss "for posting defamatory and false statements online about the company and the game.
"The lawsuit follows multiple rebuffed attempts to reconcile the matter out of court."
The firm had written to Everiss, a former marketer for the games industry,
twice in
August, threatening him with legal action because he had allegedly made defamatory remarks about Evony in articles written for his blog.
The first letter sent to Everiss gave him a deadline of August 28 to confirm that he was the author of the articles, or else identify the author.
It also asked for the names of all those involved in publication of the articles.
In that letter, the lawyers had demanded that he confirm by August 28 that he wrote blog entries on The Chaos Engine, a games industry forum, under a certain name, and provide the names of all involved in the publication of these entries, which the lawyers claim defame their client.
Everiss has posted both letters on his blog.
In the first letter, the law firm had mentioned the case of Gutnick v Dow Jones in which Australian mining magnate Joseph Gutnick sued the US-based Dow Jones over material which he said had defamed him in the state of Victoria.
Gutnick, who lives in Melbourne, won the case which was filed in Victoria. Evony has no presence in Australia; the company is registered in the US state of Delaware.
Update, September 20: Contacted for comment. Everiss said as his blog was a specialist one for people who worked in the video games industry, Evony, by using the Australian legal system against him, had brought their activities to a vastly bigger audience.
"If anyone thinks that browser games are safe they should think again. It is very easy for these games to download anything they want onto your computer without you knowing about it," he added.
Everiss said he had been accused of fraud in the media release issued by Warren Mckeon Dickson and was thus in a position to file libel charges against the solicitors in a London court if he could afford it - which he said he could not.
Warren McKeon Dickson was contacted for comment on August 31. The company is yet to respond.