Atari halts P2P file sharing lawsuits

Video game maker Atari has temporarily stopped targeting alleged video game file sharers in the United Kingdom, because its working relationship with a London law firm has ended.

Atari chose London-based Davenport Lyons to help sue peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharers who allegedly were sharing Race07 and other Atari video games through BitTorrent.

Each person who received a letter from Davenport Lyons were requested to pay £500 compensation or legal action would be taken if they refused.

"In relation to file sharing, our position is that we always retain and reserve the right to protect our intellectual property from illegal copying and piracy," Atari told The Register in an e-mail.  "Whilst we are no longer working with Davenport Lyons, we continue to work with legal advisers to protect our rights."

Atari and Davenport Lyons used Logistep technology to unveil a user’s ISP address, which would be turned over to Davenport Lyons, who would then subpoena the ISP to obtain names and addresses of users based on IP addresses.

Atari recently mistakenly accused a Scottish couple who never played a PC game and didn’t know about P2P technology of pirating the video game.  The lawsuit against the couple was quickly dropped.

Even though it’s likely Atari and other game studios will target people sharing their copyrighted games, it’s important for the companies to tread lightly and do it the right way.  Atari has gotten nothing but bad press after it began suing file sharers, which reached an even higher level after the Scottish couple were wrongly accused of file sharing.