Photographer Sues Capcom for $12M for Using Her Photos in Video Games

A photographer has filed a lawsuit against Capcom, accusing the Japanese video game giant of infringing her copyright by using her photos extensively in its best-selling video games.

Polygon reports that Judy A. Juracek filed her initial complaint in a Connecticut court yesterday.

Juracek is a designer and photographer who has published several books with photos of various surfaces to serve as a visual research resource for artists, architects, and designers.

The 1996 book (and companion CD-ROM) at the center of this lawsuit is titled Surfaces, and the description states that it “offers over 1,200 outstanding, vibrantly colorful visual images of surface textures–wood, stone, marble, brick, plaster, stucco, aggregates, metal, tile, and glass–ready to be used in your designs, presentations, or comps, as backgrounds or for general visual information.”

In her lawsuit against…