Judge denies Destiny 2 cheat seller AimJunkies’ request for a new trial

Destiny 2 cheat seller AimJunkies has been hit with two major setbacks in its legal battle against Bungie.

As reported by TorrentFreak, the group has failed to convince the Seattle District Court to overturn a jury verdict issued in May, while in a separate ruling the Court of Appeals has affirmed a previous award of $4.3 million in favour of Bungie.

Bungie originally filed a complaint in June 2021, suing AimJunkies and its parent company Phoenix Digital for copyright infringement.

In 2022 a federal court partially dismissed the claim, saying the copyright infringement argument hadn’t been properly explained. It did, however, refer to arbitration the other claims that weren’t related to copyright, most notably claims that the software violated the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision.

This resulted in a decision last year that AimJunkies had to pay Bungie more than $4.3 million for violating the DMCA by bypassing Bungie’s protection measures.

Then, in a separate case focused primarily on the previously dismissed copyright side of the argument, a jury found in May that AimJunkies, its website’s operating company Phoenix Digital Group and third-party developer James May were all liable for copyright infringement, with a further payment of $63,210 ordered.

AimJunkies filed a motion asking the Seattle District Court to overrule the jury’s May verdict, and requesting either a new verdict or a new trial.

However, Judge Thomas Zilly denied the request last week, saying Bungie had to prove it owned the copyrights and that AimJunkies had infringed on them. Since the presented evidence supported this, he concluded, there’s no case for a new trial.

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Meanwhile, also last week, a separate appeal was heard for the $4.3 million arbitration award, with AimJunkies claiming the award was not fair and correct, because they were denied the chance to cross-examine Bungie’s witness.

The Ninth Circuit Court found that the award was correct, and that the defendants weren’t prevented from challenging the witness, claiming AimJunkies’ counsel “did not attempt to” challenge the witness and instead “abandoned the line of questioning entirely”.

As a result of both of last week’s decisions, AimJunkies will now not get a new trial in the copyright infringement case, and the $4.3 million awarded to Bungie in the arbitration case can now be collected by the Destiny studio.