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Plot Thickens for Dispute over 'Star Wars'-Related Card Game App

By Ross Todd
June 01, 2018

In a lawsuit over rights to a card game with a pivotal role in the Star Wars saga, Lucasfilm Ltd. won an early battle against app maker Ren Ventures Ltd. when a federal district judge in San Francisco declined to dismiss Lucasfilm's claims based on Ren Ventures' use of various trademarks, primarily centered on the game Sabacc. Lucasfilm Ltd. LLC v. Ren Ventures Ltd., 3:2017cv07249.

In the Star Wars universe, Han Solo won the iconic Millennium Falcon spaceship by beating Lando Calrissian in a game of Sabacc, a fact first noted in a draft of the screenplay for Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back and then the novelization of the 1980 film. A trilogy of novels about Calrissian published in 1983 included an explanation of the blackjack-line game in which players seek a hand as close as possible to positive or negative 23 without going over.

Lucasfilm sued Ren Ventures last year claiming the company's Sabacc app violated the film company's intellectual property rights. The Sabacc app page in the Apple App Store, Lucasfilm's lawyers at New York's Shapiro Arato pointed out, makes numerous Star Wars allusions, including “From a Cantina far, far away to your mobile device, welcome to the world's largest Sabacc site” and “Go bust? Don't worry, we won't take your ship!”

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