conchobhar
What's Shenmue?
A nice coffee table book is actually exactly where the photos came from:I mean, the photographer explicitly sells these images for this purpose (as in, her photos aren't just a nice coffee table book) with a ready-made license agreement. Someone along the chain definitely knew the deal.
Designer Judy A. Juracek filed her initial complaint in a Connecticut court on Friday. In the lawsuit, she alleged that Capcom used photos from her copyrighted book, Surfaces, in multiple games, including Resident Evil 4, Devil May Cry, and other Capcom games. Surfaces is a collection of 1,200 photographs of textures that Juracek photographed herself; the book is intended to be used for “visual research” for artists, architects, and designers, according to the book’s description. It was originally published in 1996. The collection comes with a CD-ROM of the images — but Juracek said she requires people to license images from her for commercial use by contacting her directly. Juracek said in the lawsuit that Capcom never contacted her for a license.
I agree with Regulus that an accident or oversight is the more plausible explanation here.