Science fiction author John L. Beiswenger has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against game publisher Ubisoft in a Pennsylvania district court, claiming that the Assassin's Creed series illegally copies ideas and themes he established in his 2002 novel Link.

Beiswenger's novel, as excerpted heavily in the suit (PDF), focuses on the titular Link device, which lets users relive the "ancestral memories" of long-dead relatives through DNA. The author alleges that this is a bit too close for comfort to Assassin's Creed's Animus devices, which are key to the series' sci-fi-meets-historical-assassinations plotline.

The book even makes reference to using the Link for assassination attempts, though the specific targets of those assassinations don't seem to match any in the Assassin's Creed universe. For example, as the lawsuit excerpts from page 290:

"If John Wilkes Booth fathered a child after he assassinated Lincoln, and we found a descendant alive today, we could place Booth at the scene and perhaps smell the gunpowder."

"Ancestral memories?"

"As far back as you want."

If that doesn't convince you that Ubisoft blatantly stole copyrighted ideas from The Link, Beiswenger also points out that his book makes use of "spiritual and biblical tones" and has a recurring theme of "the battle between good and evil"... just like Assassin's Creed!. That has to be more than a coincidence, wouldn't you say?

Coincidence or not, the kinds of similarities cited in the complaint aren't nearly substantial enough to sustain a copyright infringement claim, according to Dallas attorney and Law of the Game blogger Mark Methenitis. "The level of comparison they're trying to make would be along the lines of both Back to the Future and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure have time machines as plot devices, so one must be infringing the other," he said. "A copyright does not protect abstract ideas at that level."

The lawsuit suggests that Beiswenger is due anywhere from $1.05 to $5.25 million from Ubisoft for copyright infringement across four Assassin's Creed games as well as multiple guide books, comic series and trailers. An Ubisoft representative said the company does not comment on ongoing litigation.