Author Claims Assassin's Creed Set-Up Was His Idea

Callate

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Dec 5, 2008
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Well, I for one know I've seen the idea of genetically-based memory in at least one other novel (Year Zero by Jeff Long, published 2002), so I find myself somewhat less than sympathetic to the author's idea that the ideas were stolen from him rather than borrowed from multiple sources and/or that similar ideas were generated organically by multiple people.

More than the fact that his book got Amazon-bombed, I find it notable that prior to today he had one review on Amazon, suggesting a book that simply hadn't generated a whole lot of attention in and of itself.

It smells to me like that woman who claimed she was responsible for Harry Potter because she used the word "Muggle".
 

Agayek

Ravenous Gormandizer
Oct 23, 2008
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Hevva said:
I have to say, this isn't sounding very Assassin's Creed-esque. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Animus is a machine based purely on biology, no? The memories are genetic in nature, rather than being part of some zero-mass particle party. Nobody's on a mission to prove or disprove the existence of the human soul. Religion is mentioned particularly in the first Assassin's Creed because it, well, is set during the Third Crusade.
I just have to comment that the reasoning here isn't exactly sound. "One uses a fictional particle, while the other uses fictional DNA, thus they are completely different" is farcical at best. The concept of both is a machine that reads a person's ancestral memories and allows them to experience it. Furthermore, if the summary of Link is correct, both it and AC are doing functionally the same thing: sending someone to relive their ancestral memories in order to uncover a mystery. Superficially, it's very similar. I'm not a lawyer, so I can't say if there's grounds for a suit, but it certainly appears to be worth investigating.
 

Dragoon

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Jan 19, 2010
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Poor guy is getting Amazon blitzed at the moment, if he was trying to get more book sales it really isn't working. I'm pretty sure this guy is going to lose this case.
 

MorganL4

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May 1, 2008
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Okay, it seems everyone here is bashing on this guy, and yeah, he does appear to have a fairly weak case, but is there ANYONE on these forums that has read the book and can give us a definitive answer as to whether this guy has a shot?
 

Andronicus

Terror Australis
Mar 25, 2009
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I know it's been said a few times already, but I thought it worth mentioning again to balance out the vitriol.

Nowhere in Assassins Creed's marketing campaigns mention anything about a "DNA Memory Recall" device. If you do not know people who play it to describe it too you, and you don't spend countless hours looking up plotlines for videogames, movies and other books, you are NOT going to know about this until much later. If you go into the game blind, you are NOT going to know that the main character is actually some modern-day average joe whose ancesters are assassins. If you're not interested in playing videogames, then this sort of information is NOT going to be made readily available to you. It's perfectly reasonable to assume that the average person on the street may be aware of a videogame in which you play an assassin, but not that you're actually doing so my reliving their memories.

That aside, the claim is mind-bogglingly stupid in far more obvious terms, namely being that the idea of genetic memory, and using some kind of device to access it, is an incredibly common concept in sci-fi. The fact that this guy thinks he has some kind of intellectual claim to it is dumbfounding. If there is any justice, this claim will be laughed out of court.
 

Arakasi

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Jun 14, 2011
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I always thought that Oblivion borrowed heavily from Raymond E. Feists 'Magician'.
But that doesn't mean it does.
Authors are condemned to repeat the same ideas as their predessesors.
 

madster11

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Aug 17, 2010
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I was wondering why he's only suing now, and the only thing i can think of is maybe he was saving up the money to afford the court costs?
It's not cheap to sue a big company, especially if you lose.
 

Blunderboy

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Apr 26, 2011
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gigastar said:
Okay...

Why did he not sue over this 4 Assasins Creed installments ago?
Once again I open a thread only to find that my exact thoughts have already been posted.
Thank you Escapist Hivemind?.
 

Kahani

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May 25, 2011
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Hevva said:
Link is mostly about a scientific discovery which "suggests that at the functional center of the nucleus of every cell is an atemporal Particle of zero mass and infinite capacity for memory a biological singularity [sic]. The same Particle is a component of every cell in the body. It is the "fabric of the soul."
So let's see. This sciency bit to explain his fictional technology is stolen directly from Orson Scott Card [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concepts_in_the_Ender%27s_Game_series#Philote], while the effects of the technology in being able to go back in time to relive other people's lives is stolen directly from Olaf Stapledon [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_and_First_Men]. And he's suing because someone copied him? Right.
 

Azuaron

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Mar 17, 2010
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Let's make this clear: even if Link was required reading for everyone on the Ubisoft development team, this guy doesn't have a case. You can't copyright ideas.
 

Slanzinger

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Nov 19, 2009
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The case that would make far more sense would be the other way round (i.e. game suing book), Charles Cecil vs. Dan Brown.

Seriously, play the first Broken Sword game through and then read The Da Vinci Code. Much of it will be more than a little bit familiar...

Unless we're getting into plot specifics and those are also similar, I'd say that the use of this device as... well... a device (dug myself into a hole there) isn't something that can be sued for.
 

MetalMagpie

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Jun 13, 2011
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6SteW6 said:
So glad to see factual, non biased reviews on amazon
My thoughts exactly. Although I find myself thinking that pretty much whenever I look at reviews of self-published books/ebooks on Amazon.

Reviews of actual products tend to be alright. But never trust the book reviews.
 

RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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gigastar said:
Okay...

Why did he not sue over this 4 Assasins Creed installments ago?
The same reason the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) waited 20 something years before suing the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) and made them change their name to WWE.
 

RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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Blunderboy said:
gigastar said:
Okay...

Why did he not sue over this 4 Assasins Creed installments ago?
Once again I open a thread only to find that my exact thoughts have already been posted.
Thank you Escapist Hivemind?.
:p That's why I generally only post responses in topics that are on their first page, preferably with 20 or fewer responses. Otherwise someone else has most likely said the exact same thing I was going to post...and 15 others have repeated it.
 

Nerexor

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Mar 23, 2009
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Just a couple of thoughts. I actually took the time to read over the legal document, and the one thing I will say is that his (admittedly very dull to read) description of the machine sounded somewhat like the animus design. (See below for that extract)

On the other hand, it was repeatedly stated that his book was only available through online outlets, no major bookstores were mentioned as means of distribution. Add in that prior to this lawsuit, the book had one review on Amazon, and no mentions anywhere else, and I think we can safely say that this is not a work that got much attention. I can't speak for the quality of the novel as a whole, but it does seem a lot less likely that Ubisoft happened to read a super obscure book and base their video game series on it.

Also beyond the fairly detailed claim about the Animus, a lot of his references to assassins weren't anything like the AC series. They wanted to find a descendent of John Wilkes Booth, to see if they could place him at Lincoln's assassination. Similarly they wanted to try using the tech on a comatose survivor of a mass assassination in Israel. In both cases it was to find the assassins, not a part of some hidden war between two factions. His other claims seem pretty superficial as well, like claiming that because both his novel and one of the AC games very briefly mentions the idea of memory interference if the tech is used on a pregnant woman is somehow plagiarism.

Anyways, for the sake of comparison, here is his description of his whatever-he-called-it:

?The Link is no longer a hand-gripped device.? Allen picked up an assembly from the small table behind the revised dentist chair now used during the Link experiments. The video monitor was now on gimbals, hanging from the ceiling so that it could be comfortably positioned in front of the test subject and yet viewed easily by those monitoring the test. ?We place this device around Anna?s biceps, just above the joint. As you can see, it looks very much like a blood-pressure cuff, except that facing the meaty part of her arm is this one-inch diameter, donut-shaped ring,? Allen continued. ?In the ring we have incorporated all of the sensors we had in the hand-gripped Link.? Allen picked up a bundled cable, with an overall diameter of about three-fourths of an inch, including a high pressure hose, two twisted pairs of wires and a thin, white, coaxial cable. ?At the center of the ring,? he said, ?we attach this special terminator, which is a gold-plated high pressure nozzle. The metal nozzle is held by the cuff tightly against the arm, making a good electrical and hydraulic connection.? ?Attached to Anna?s other arm, at the wrist, is still a standard grounding strap. The ten-volt pulse is applied between the grounding strap and the nozzle. Power to the Link circuit is supplied by one twisted pair, and the data received from Anna?s particle is carried by the coax to the recording equipment over there,? he finished, pointing to an impressive array at a test station against the wall directly behind the chair, adjacent to the door.

Compare to picture of the animus seen here: http://images.wikia.com/assassinscreed/images/f/f6/Ac_desmond.jpg
 

jklinders

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Sep 21, 2010
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Yeah.

Based on the merits of his case, I give this about a snowballs chance in hades of going through. If George Lucas got away with the similarities between Star Wars and (insert almost every hero's journey story ever written not to mention a couple of nasty subversions) then I'm pretty certain Ubisoft is safe.
 

Innegativeion

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Feb 18, 2011
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Sylveria said:
I think you vastly underestimate how stupid the US legal system really is.
Well, you have to remember the principal reason why it is stupid;

The more money a party is willing and able to throw at their lawyers the more they tend to hand asses to other parties.

Something tells me Ubisoft has handful more dollars to give their lawyers than this unknown author.