Cheats-Area.com

 We all know the notorious successful and wildly violent Grand Theft Auto series of games. The series has sparked a number of controversies and court cases in recent years. The developer, Rockstar Games, just put one such case behind it.

What happened is that last week, US District Court Judge Margaret Morrow sided with the studio in a civil suit brought against it by a strip club.

E.S.S. Entertainment is a Los Angeles company, which is better known as the strip club The Play Pen. The club has filed suit against Rockstar in April of 2005, alleging that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was using some its trademarks. The bugger was the mark of a strip club, The Pig Pen.

E.S.S. Entertainment claimed that the in-game used one of the club's appearance, also the logo were too similar to the Play Pen's - this representing a violation of the trademark rights. In response, the Rockstar Games employees went to the club and took pictures for the game and the artists who created The Pig Pen had taken photos of The Play Pen.

"The Pig Pen has artistic relevance to defendants' twisted, irreverent image of urban Los Angeles. The game aim in creating East Los Santos was to evoke an image of East Los Angeles, but to tweak that image to fit the overall 'look and feel' of San Andreas, as well as the narrative of a city overrun by gangs, drug dealers, and prostitutes. Any visual work that seeks to offer an artistic commentary on a particular subject must use identifiable features of that subject so that the commentary will be understood and appreciated by the consumer", said Judge Morrow.

The Judge said that Rockstar has to fulfill two criteria, which Rockstar did so the suit ended.

"As these facts show, defendants' use of the Play Pen trade dress and mark presents little, if any, chance that consumers will be misled about the content of the game," Morrow ruled.