VB has obtained the Temporary Restraining Order against Brock Pierce (.pdf) granted to Alan Debonneville earlier this week.

The TRO prevents Pierce from “failing to comply with the terms of the settlement” of his bitter legal dispute with Debonneville (one of the co-founders of his virtual property company “Internet Gaming Entertainment”) over certain business deals associated with IGE. For the complete background of this at time highly personal suit, see VB’s complete coverage of Debonneville v. Pierce.

Specifically, the TRO states that the court, after reviewing the record, restrains Pierce from “contacting any bank for Debonneville or his attorneys for purposes of reversing any payment Pierce made to Debonneville under the terms of the parties’ settlement agreement in this lawsuit [...], attempting to reverse any payment made to Debonneville or his attorneys [...], taking any action to sell, assign, [or] transfer [...] any asset owned directly or indirectly by Pierce, unless such action is performed solely to raise funds to be paid to Debonneville, [or] filing any suit relating to the settlement, Debonneville or his attorneys, other than a personal bankruptcy suit.”

The court found that “unless Pierce … is immediately restrained from [these] acts, Pierce will commit these acts, thus causing immediate and irreparable injury to Debonneville.” The harm would be irreparable, the court said, because the acts “would be part of a wrongful scheme by Pierce, already commenced, to attempt to illegally recover settlement payments already paid to Debonneville or to avoid paying Pierce’s settlement obligations.”

A hearing as to whether the restraining order should be made permanent is scheduled for May 5 at 10:30 AM.

Blizzard and MDY have filed responses to last month’s Motions for Summary Judgment in their lawsuit over the popular World of Warcraft automation program “WoW Glider” (now “MMO Glider”). Exhibits include an expert report supporting MDY from Koleman Strumpf (PhD, Economics) of the University of Kansas School of Business.

The Strumpf report counters Edward Castronova’s (PhD, Economics) expert report filed with Blizzard’s motion for summary judgment last month. Strumpf concludes that there is no convincing evidence that Glider harms World of Warcraft or Blizzard — and even argues that Glider my actually benefit Blizzard by increasing playing time and subscribers. Blizzard, obviously, disagrees. The responses also address copyright and contract claims, among other issues.

Here are the documents:

• MDY’s Response to Blizzard’s Motion for Summary Judgment (.pdf)
• MDY’s Response to Blizzard’s Statement of Facts (.pdf)

• Blizzard’s Response to MDY’s Motion for Summary Judgment (.pdf)
• Blizzard’s Response to MDY’s Statement of Facts (.pdf)
• Impact of Glider on World of Warcraft, Koleman Strumpf, PhD (.pdf)

VB has also obtained the complete exhibit packages for each of these motions.

• MDY’s Exhibits (.zip)
• Blizzard’s Exhibits (.zip)

For the background of this case, see VB’s complete coverage of MDY v. Blizzard. Very briefly, Glider is a program that users run along with World of Warcraft. It automates key tasks in World of Warcraft, making it possible to play the game essentially unattended. Glider users can thus both harvest resources and generate high level characters without actually playing. MDY originally filed this lawsuit in federal court in Arizona seeking a declaratory judgment that MDY does not violate Blizzard’s intellectual property rights by selling the Glider program. Blizzard counterclaimed, alleging trademark and copyright infringement, as well as a handful of business torts. The case is now at the summary judgment stage, where the judge will decide any issues that are sufficiently established as a matter of law that they need not go to the jury.

I typically run excerpts from documents like these, but I am on the road this week and unable to do the task justice. Rather than do it poorly or wait a week to share these, I’ll post them now and leave picking through the responses and exhibits to readers. I have read the responses though, and I must say that both sides put forth creative, compelling arguments as to why Glider does or does not violate Blizzard’s copyright and why Glider does or does not cost Blizzard money. These are some of the strongest briefs I’ve read since I started covering game and virtual world lawsuits. Additionally, the exhibits contain a goldmine of information — including deposition excerpts, forum posts, and more.

The best way to read these documents is to start with the responses to the motions, and then move to the responses to the statements of facts — those reference the exhibits directly in context. Note that there may be one or two exhibits missing from the exhibit packs — those were filed under seal and not available to the public.

Download the full documents and exhibit packs if you are interested, and if you find anything particularly compelling, please post a note in the comments.

VB has obtained court minutes (.pdf) indicating that the Debonneville v. Pierce court recently granted a request for a temporary restraining order filed on behalf of Alan Debonneville against Brock Pierce.

The request and the proposed order are sealed, so what, exactly Brock Pierce is restrained from doing is not presently known. [4/30/08 update -- the final order has been filed publicly, more information here.] Plaintiff Alan Debonneville was required to put up a $10,000 bond, which is fairly standard procedure for TROs because it guarantees that the party seeking the order can pay damages if it turns out that the TRO was not justified. A hearing as to whether the mystery TRO should be made permanent is set for May 5.

Pierce and Debonneville are co-founders of IGE, a virtual property company. They have been locked in a bitter, highly personal lawsuit since last summer.

According to minutes (.pdf) obtained by Virtually Blind, Judge Manuel Real of the Central District of California has, on his own motion, ordered a status conference in Debonneville v. Pierce — presumably to ask why the parties have not yet finalized the settlement they reached last month.

Readers will recall that last month virtual property company IGE founders Brock Pierce and Alan Debonneville — who have been locked in a nasty, often highly personal lawsuit since last summer — told the court that they’d reached a settlement on all essential terms. Magistrate Judge Margaret Nagle (who is handling discovery and some pretrial issues in this case) ordered the parties to file a stipulation of dismissal with the Court by Monday, April 14, or else tell the Clerk of Court why they had not. At that time, VB noted that although settlement seemed imminent, with the parties behaving as antagonistically as they had so far, nothing was certain. As it turns out, no stipulation was filed by that date, and none has been yet.

Today, the Honorable Manuel Real, the District Court Judge assigned to the case, ordered a status conference for Friday (tomorrow) at 10:00 AM. This seems to indicate there is — surprise, surprise — some hang-up with the settlement. That alone would be interesting enough, but what makes this the equivalent of must-see-TV for people following game and virtual world lawsuits is the fact that the Honorable Manuel Real (pronounced as in “real world”) has a reputation for running a, um, rather tight ship in his courtroom, and isn’t likely to be impressed with the history of this case or the parties’ behavior.

It isn’t clear if the status conference is to be held by phone or in person, but either way, status conferences are typically held in open court and on the record. If the parties need to discuss specifics of the settlement, however, Judge Real may hold part or all of the conference behind closed doors. For Los Angeles readers with some time to kill tomorrow (who don’t mind gambling a bit of time against the chance that it’ll be closed to the public) Judge Real is in Courtroom 8 at the Federal Courthouse on Spring Street, and the status conference is scheduled for 10:00 AM. If you happen to attend and anything interesting happens, please drop by afterward with a report.