The court case between Sonoda Ken of the Akasaka Drivens and Ishibashi Nobuhiro of the U-Next Pirates is now underway.
Ishibashi is suing Sonoda for 10,000,000 yen for copyright infringement after Sonoda had used Ishibashi’s signature “Red 5 Discard Trap” on December 3, 2020. The maneuver, which was done in S1-0, cost Ishibashi 5,500 points and was one of the contributing factors in the stress he experienced in S4-0 of the same game.
“He stole my signature move,” Ishibashi told reporters in front of the courthouse, “He was the last person I expected to steal from me.”
Sonoda was very confident that he was going to win the case, just like how he won that game against Ishibashi. “It’s mahjong! Any discard is legal. What’s next? Someone copyrights the act of discarding genbutsu? Selling yaku cards that change every year for 850 yen?”
M-League Watch has found an old patent with the alpha-numeric ID dQw4w9WgXcQ which indicates that Ishibashi is the rightful owner of the move.
M-League Watch 