40 League of Legends Launch Characters, mostly swiped from other IP.
Below is a full list of the 40 League of Legends Launch Characters with a Traffic Light System depicting Original, Borrowed or Infringed upon another IP.
Traffic Light System
Green = Original.
Amber = borrowed from elsewhere such as age-old Archetypes and tropes from myths, books, films and pop culture, or other IP but too generic to be IP infringement.
Red = Suspected Infringement of any degree above what a right minded and informed person would deem as too generic.
Original 40 Launch Champions (2009)
1. Alistar 21. Master Yi
2. Amumu 22. Morgana
3. Anivia 23. Nasus
4. Annie 24. Rammus
5. Ashe 25. Ryze
6. Blitzcrank 26. Shaco
7. Cho'Gath 27. Singed
8. Corki 28. Sion
9. Dr. Mundo 29. Sivir
10. Evelynn 30. Soraka
11. Fiddlesticks 31. Taric
12. Gangplank 32. Teemo
13. Heimerdinger 33. Tristana
14. Janna 34. Tryndamere
15. Jax 35. Twisted Fate
16. Karthus 36. Twitch
17. Kassadin 37. Udyr
18. Katarina 38. Veigar
19. Kayle 39. Warwick
20. Malphite 40. Zilean
41. Nidalee
Analysis of Exhibit D— List of the 40 League of Legends Launch Characters.
Riot Games had 40/ 41 League of Legends Launch Characters on their launch in October 2009. The flagship game they launched, League of Legends, has been shown to have been a case of Swipe and Sabotage from a U.S based rival and many public modders. They sold this stolen IP back to the public with a roster of these 40/ 41 playable Characters.
Of the 41, only two can be claimed to be highly original and one of the two, Gangplank, is only original precisely because he is too generic to claim any swiping.
So, approximately 4.88% of the champions appear to be original or not clearly derived from other IPs.
Of the 41, 18 were constructed using widely recognized archetypes and tropes, drawn from mythology, literature, film, pop culture, and other intellectual properties. However, these borrowings are sufficiently broad or generic to fall short of direct copyright infringement.
So approximately 43.90% of the champions are based on broad archetypes or tropes, or broader borrowings that are not considered direct IP infringement.
Of the 41, 21 of the characters can be traced directly back to IP or a mix of IPs of rival companies, mostly from the US, and a few from the UK and Japan.
So approximately 51.22%, a slight majority, of the original 41 champions appear to be directly derived from identifiable intellectual property owned by rival companies, predominantly from the United States, with some from the United Kingdom and Japan.
Conclusion for Exhibit D- Eastern Gaming Industry Heist
Over half of Riot Games’ original 41 champions can be traced directly to identifiable intellectual property held by rival companies, primarily based in the United States, with additional sources in the United Kingdom and Japan. These are not generic inspirations but clear, and sometimes admitted, derivations from established IP. The remaining group of 18 champions includes at least half whose designs draw heavily on common archetypes or public-domain tropes, though even among those, a case could be made that several cross the line into derivative use. This analysis already errs on the side of caution.
It is increasingly clear that League of Legends itself was built on a foundation of IP appropriation, backed by a broader pattern of economic sabotage targeting Western gaming and entertainment industries. Tencent, a Chinese tech conglomerate closely aligned with the PRC, acquired a majority stake in Riot Games by February 2011, just 13 months after the launch of League. Their entry into the company may not have been incidental, but strategic, possibly even part of what could be termed the “Eastern Gaming Industry Heist.” Since then, Tencent has played a dominant role in shaping the global gaming market, including the harvesting of U.S. data, the systematic capture of Western creative output, and the monetization of re-skinned IP under the free-to-play model. This IP stripping and reselling for infinitely more via micro- transactions have also spread into the business practices of NetEase who wear a false mask of rivalry to Tencent. This is not rivalry, it’s branching rivulets of the same heist.
Continued Pattern of Abuse
Tencent and Riot Games did not stop there. The Plaintiff will propose:
That this theft continued, that perhaps drawing big companies into litigation by poking and nibbling at their IP borders is a strategy of IP warfare to destabilize rivals and western markets.
That, the reason Riot has gotten away with it for so long is because these big, predominantly US, companies have not taken the bait and allowed their fins to be nibbled in a silent and brush-it-aside strategy alike the appeasement of Hitler prior to WW2 and this strategy will fail and lead to declarations of economic warfare.
That Riot also aimed down, stealing from the defenseless, and even abusing thousands of women working for them, daring them to speak out, then publicly abusing them and humiliating them with hacking, retaliations and legal bullying and abuse.
That Riot’s unethical and highly illegal business practices such as IP swiping, retaliations, sabotage, threats, “Treasured Gateways”, economic abuse, and legal bullying and fraud is proliferating and has allowed them to infest more US and Uk industries.
That Riot, via Tencent, via The Chinese Communist Dictatorship is challenging and pressure testing the US courts and legal systems to see what they can get away with and to expose the weaknesses, and that they are doing this by paying unethical US attorneys to exploit these weaknesses, pointing out the technicalities, hurdles, and officials who might be sympathizers or oriented to bending. Of course we can turn the blind eye to pretend that this doesn’t happen, but this is precisely why it is happening and precisely why 6 million jews were send to consetration camps
This is not simply business expansion, it is coordinated cultural and economic warfare. It has come at the direct expense of U.S. and U.K. developers, writers, artists, and companies, whose work has been exploited, erased, and resold without credit or compensation. Riot’s business model exemplifies this trend.
