On October 17, 2017, Epic Games sued Philip Josefsson and Artem Yakovenko for copyright infringement, trademark infringement, false designation of origin, breach of contract, and, under California law, unfair competition. 



The allegations against Josefsson and Yakovenko are similar to those made against Brandon Broom and Charles Vraspir.  Specifically, Epic alleges that Josefsson and Yakovenko created, marketed, and distributed cheats for Fortnite. 

Interestingly, Epic claims that both defendants, who do not live in the United States, consented to venue in the United States by participating in the YouTube DMCA notification/counter-notification process.  Mr. Josefsson is a resident of Sweden, and Mr. Yakovenko is a resident of Russia.  Both defendants posted YouTube videos displaying their cheats, and Epic filed DMCA notifications against those videos to take them down.  Both Josefsson and Yakovenko filed counter-notifications against Epic’s DMCA notifications.  Because Josefsson and Yakovenko, per the terms of the counter-notification, thereby “consent[ed] to . . . if my address is outside of the United States, the judicial district in which YouTube is located,” Epic argues in its complaint that both parties consented to be sued in the Northern District of California. 

This suit appears to be the latest in a string of suits by Epic to take “every measure to ensure [that] cheaters are removed from Fortnite Battle Royale.”

From Law360:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday put tighter restrictions on where patent owners can file infringement lawsuits, a decision that upends nearly 30 years of established practice and will likely force many lawsuits out of the patent litigation hotbed of the Eastern District of Texas.
In an 8-0 decision, the Supreme Court reversed a Federal Circuit rule that effectively allowed a patent holder to file suit anywhere a defendant makes sales, which critics complained has fueled a plague of forum shopping and a concentration of cases in a few jurisdictions.
Ruling in favor of liquid sweetener maker TC Heartland LLC, the justices reinstated a more restrictive standard from a 1957 Supreme Court decision, saying it remained good law.

“We therefore hold that a domestic corporation ‘resides’ only in its State of incorporation for purposes of the patent venue statute,” the court wrote.