Riot Games files another lawsuit against Moonton

Riot Games has filed another lawsuit against Moonton Technology, four years since it first started legal action against the Chinese game developer.

The lawsuit: Riot Games and Moonton have a storied history as it is.

• As per Reuters, the League of Legends developer sued Moonton, a business unit of TikTok parent company ByteDance, in Los Angeles federal court on May 9.
• The suit claims that "Moonton's strategy is blatant copying" of Riot's mobile title, League of Legends: Wild Rift, with its own title Mobile Legends: Bang Bang.
• Riot, according to the suit, is aiming to stop Moonton from "continuing its deliberate and sustained campaign to free ride on Riot's highly valuable rights." The Tencent-owned company states that Moonton consistently copies its moves to improve and market Wild Rift.

League of Legal Battles: Let's take a brief look at the history between the companies.

• Riot Games filed against Moonton in the very same court in L.A. back in 2017 when it alleged that Mobile Legends: Bang Bang and other games from Moonton were copying from its popular MOBA, League of Legends.
• The case was dismissed later that year, with the court ruling that it would be better suited to taking place in China. Riot is wholly owned by Chinese conglomerate Tencent and Moonton was acquired by Chinese technology company ByteDance for almost $4B in 2021.
• Though the case was ultimately dismissed, Tencent later filed another suit against Moonton Co-Founder Watxon Xu for violating a non-complete cause, eventually winning a $2.9M settlement.
• Interestingly, ByteDance outbid Tencent to acquire the game developer in 2020. Had Tencent been chosen as the acquirer, it would have owned the rights to both League of Legends and Mobile Legends — a move that would have undoubtedly ended the ongoing battle.