Resident Evil 4

If Capcom hadn't already suffered enough from last November's data leak, it's now facing a $12 million lawsuit.

Designer Judy A. Juracek took action on Friday in a Connecticut court within the United States, alleging Capcom used copyrighted photos from her 1996 book Surfaces without her permission.

Her work contains a collection of more than 1,200 texture photographs intended for visual research. It also comes with a CD-ROM of all of the images which commercial companies must license in order to use.

At this point, you should be able to see where this is going. Juracek claims Capcom didn't take this important step and apparently, over 200 of her images have been repurposed across various video games. The lawsuit shows over 80 of these - covering series like Resident Evil and Devil May Cry.

One of the many examples highlighted was the logo of Resident Evil 4. Here's a look (via VGC):

Resident Evil Comparison

In addition to this, there's a claim that one of the images found within Capcom's data breach had the same file name as one from the Surfaces CD.

Juracek's legal reps are asking for $12 million in damages for copyright infringement and $2500 - $25,000 for each photograph used. The lawsuit also references previous allegations made by a filmmaker in April, who accused Capcom of plagiarising monster designs in Resident Evil Village.

You can read more about Capcom's data leak in our previous post and see the full case over on Scribd.

[source polygon.com, via videogameschronicle.com]