"A Texas federal judge rightly denied Activision Blizzard Inc. attorneys’ fees after defeating professional wrestler Booker T’s copyright infringement lawsuit over a character in the video game-maker’s Call of Duty series, the Fifth Circuit ruled Wednesday.

The judge conducted a “careful analysis” to determine that the lawsuit wasn’t objectively unreasonable before rejecting Activision’s request for fees, according to an unpublished opinion issued Wednesday by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

A Texas jury in 2021 found Activision didn’t infringe Booker T’s “G.I. Bro” comic character with a character in Call of Duty, and the Fifth Circuit upheld the decision in 2022. The US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas denied Activision’s motion for attorneys’ fees the same year and the company appealed, arguing the court abused its discretion by ignoring Fifth Circuit language that “an award of attorney’s fees to the prevailing party in a copyright action is the rule rather than the exception and should be awarded routinely...”

 

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This article was originally published in Bloomberg Law.