{"id":5957,"date":"2025-05-21T09:24:58","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T09:24:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/fortnite-wins-lawsuit-over-travis-scott-ariana-grande-concerts\/"},"modified":"2025-05-21T09:24:58","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T09:24:58","slug":"fortnite-wins-lawsuit-over-travis-scott-ariana-grande-concerts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/fortnite-wins-lawsuit-over-travis-scott-ariana-grande-concerts\/","title":{"rendered":"Fortnite Wins Lawsuit Over Travis Scott, Ariana Grande Concerts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tT<\/span>he maker of Fortnite has defeated a $32.5 million patent lawsuit over animated in-game concerts put on by Travis Scott and Ariana Grande, with a federal jury deciding that it did not steal another company\u2019s technology for the virtual events. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe verdict came down on Monday (May 19) after a weeklong trial against Fortnite maker Epic Games. Epic was accused of infringing a patent invented by Canadian virtual reality company Utherverse Digital when it staged the virtual Scott and Grande concerts for tens of millions of Fortnite users in 2020 and 2021.<\/p>\n

\n\tUtherverse was seeking $32.5 million in damages for the alleged infringement. But the jury in Seattle federal court rejected the claims, siding with Epic to rule that neither the Scott nor the Grande concert stole Utherverse\u2019s technology.<\/p>\n

\n\tLawyers for Utherverse and Epic did not immediately respond to Billboard<\/em>\u2018s requests for comment on the verdict Tuesday (May 20).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe litigation has been ongoing since 2021. That year, Utherverse claimed that the Fortnite concerts relied on a patent it was issued in 2017, which covers a type of technology for playing back a recorded event in a virtual world.<\/p>\n

\n\tEpic denied any infringement, saying the technology behind its virtual concerts used completely different processes than Utherverse\u2019s patent. Epic\u2019s attorney, Daralyn Durie<\/strong> of the law firm Morrison Foerster, said during the trial\u2019s closing arguments that Utherverse was \u201ctrying to fit a square peg in a round hole.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJurors heard testimony during the trial from Brian Shuster<\/strong> and Aaron Burch<\/strong>, two Utherverse employees who co-invented the patent at issue. Multiple Epic executives also testified, including controller Brian Boyle<\/strong> and former head of marketing Matthew Weissinger<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\n\tScott\u2019s \u201cAstronomical\u201d concert series in April 2020 made history as Fornite\u2019s largest-yet in-game gathering, drawing nearly 28 million unique players from across the world across five airings of a pre-taped performance by the rapper\u2019s avatar.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn August 2021, Fortnite followed up its success with the Scott concerts with Grande\u2019s \u201cRift Tour,\u201d which similarly featured an animated version of the pop star performing hits like \u201c7 rings\u201d and \u201cPositions\u201d across five viewings.<\/p>\n

\n\tA number of other artists have since performed their own virtual concerts within the massively popular Fortnite gaming universe, including Eminem, The Weeknd and Billie Eilish.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The maker of Fortnite has defeated a $32.5 million patent lawsuit over animated in-game concerts put on by Travis Scott and Ariana Grande, with a federal jury deciding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5958,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2402,6034,6033,2403,303,421,420,882],"class_list":["post-5957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-ariana","tag-concerts","tag-fortnite","tag-grande","tag-lawsuit","tag-scott","tag-travis","tag-wins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}