Author: by Staff

Publisher Genius Products and hardware creator Numark have been awarded a temporary restraining order against 7 Studios, imposing a 'no talk' order and immediate return of code from the Activision subsidiary. A statement released by Genius revealed that the Los Angeles County Superior Court has granted the restraining order against Activision and 7 Studios, following an initial lawsuit late last week. Last Wednesday, the Court ordered 7 Studios, which was recently acquired by Activision, to turn over to Scratch DJ Game LLC (Genius & Numark's company) within five days all source code related to Scratch – The Ultimate DJ game, including 7 Studios' pre-existing developer software tools and technology that went into developing the game. In addition, to this, the court has now "...granted an injunction preventing 7 Studios from disclosing or discussing the game code or Scratch trade secrets with Activision or any other third party." According to Genius' claims, Activision is now “walled off” by the Court’s order from discussing Scratch or its game code or confidential information with its own subsidiary, – which had previously worked on Scratch for 18 months as a contract work-for-hire developer. In addition to winning the requested injunctive relief, Scratch DJ Game LLC announced that "... it will aggressively pursue its court case against Activision, 7 Studios and Peterson for damages resulting from their actions to delay and take over the Scratch game." Activision's last comment on the lawsuit, late last week, had them commenting that "the L.A. Superior Court found that there was no evidence of any wrongdoing by Activision and refused to grant any restraining order against Activision." It's unclear whether this restraining order implies any wrongdoing, but it certainly forces 7 Studios not to discuss the creation of Scratch with Activision, as well as ensuring the return of the source code to Genius.