Two months before it's April debut, a pirated version of Assassin's Creed for the PC was leaked to the internet.  After tracking down the culprit, Ubisoft filed a lawsuit against Optical Experts Manufacturing last month, as GameSpot reports.

The company originally contracted OEM to reproduce copies of the game discs and is now alleging that they ignored preventative security procedures, thus allowing an OEM employee to home a copy of Assassin's Creed and posting it online in February, about six weeks before the game actually shipped.  According to Ubisoft, OEM admitted to not following these security measures, one of which was supposed to keep the game from ever leaving OEM facilities.

A copy of the game was later found at the aforementioned employee's residence.

Ubisoft claims that the pirated game was downloaded over 700,000 times, costing the publisher millions in potential revenue.  They are also stating that the leak damaged their reputation as a company due to a bug intentionally inserted into the pre-release version.  As a result, early reviews of the game included complaints of in-game crashes and other problems created by the bug, which Ubisoft removed from the final product.

Ubisoft is now suing OEM for copyright infringement, demanding no less than $10 million for each count of negligence and breach of contract.