April 18, 2006
Does World of War Craft (WOW) Fan Game Guide Violate Publisher's Copyright?
(From March 30 2006) Game Spot News reports about a 24-year old self-publisher filing a law suit CA federal court against video game publishing giant Blizzard Entertainment. 24 year old Brian Kopp sold an unofficial game guide titled, "The Ultimate World of Warcraft Leveling & Gold Guide" on Ebay for $15 a piece. World of Warcraft is Blizzard's epic Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) that has record sales and membership across the globe. Blizzard and Vivendi repeatedly filed to have the guides stripped from the bidding marketplace, to which Ebay complied. He also has an independent website that sells the guides.
According to Game Spot, "Weeks after his first auction went live, Blizzard, Vivendi, and the ESA began sending repeated takedown notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), asking eBay to yank the auctions because of copyright and trademark infringement concerns. The auction giant's general policy is to halt auctions when it receives such complaints and to suspend a user's account after it racks up a certain number of warnings." Kopp filed counter-notices protesting the take downs. In his complaint he alleges that the guide does not violate copyright laws b/c it has a disclaimer notice on the first page stating that it is an unofficial guide and it's use of selected screen shots falls within Fair Use.
Kopp seeks three forms of relief in his suit:
- Compensatory damages to cover certain expenses including lost profits from halted sales
- Injunction preventing others from interfering with his right to publish such guides
- Declaratory judgment that his book is protected by the First Amendment
About this suit, Kopp's lawyer said: "In effect, if the video game industry's actions are upheld, 'then selling a how-to book about Microsoft Word would infringe Microsoft's copyright, especially if the book contained one or more screenshots of Word's user interface,' said Paul Levy of the public-interest advocacy group Public Citizen, which joined in filing the suit on behalf of Kopp. 'We think this cannot be the law.'"
Posted by MikeMintz at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)
April 16, 2006
Networks Don't Like the Idea of Cable Company DVR Services
Cablevision's plan to set up a network-based DVR service that would serve as a video-on-demand system did not find a warm reception from the networks. One network head gave the excuse that the lawyers had their hands on the idea to figure out a strategy. The IP implications, royalty payments and licensing nightmares are likely to create a lot of billable hours. Read more.
Posted by MikeMintz at 09:18 PM | Comments (0)
August 18, 2005
Case Discussion: KC Munchkin/Pac Man
Greg Lastowka is a Rutgers law professor that speaks and writes on
game law. He has an excellent post on Terra Nova about the Pac
Man/KC Munchkin copyright infringement case: Atari v. North American
Philips Consumer Elecs., 672 F.2d 607.
Posted by della at 09:28 AM | Comments (0)
August 05, 2005
Hot Topics, Hot Coffee, and Hot Intellectual Property
Welcome! Here you'll find postings on the hot topics in IP in games, and on how the hot topics in our industry relate to IP issues.
So what hotter topic than "hot coffee", right? If you're in games you've heard a lot of furor and debate about "hot coffee" - censorship, freedom of speech, truth in advertising, responsibility, politicians, ethics. But if you're reading this, I bet what you really want to know if how it all relates to Intellectual Property Rights!
Who owns "hot coffee"?
Back when the word was that it was a player originated mod, we'd be right in one of the most controversial topics in IP for games. Who owns the mods that people create based on off the shelf use of commercially available games? Is it a derivative work? Or is it a new work, like the books that are written using Microsoft Word?
But wait, that's not the issue at all, because next we hear, there was the speculation that the mini-game was created by a team member, unbeknownest to management. And just put in, or left in, the game by that person without anyone knowing. Wait, hold the skepticism, and just consider for a minute: Who owns things someone puts into a game without anyone knowing? Well if they're an employee, they probably have a contract that assigns all their copyrights and moral rights to their employer. For work related to their job. Even if the employer claims it wasn't work they commissioned or approved, my guess is that it would still be among the things agreed to be assigned to the employer. But that begs the question of who owns unrelated things that are snuck into a game. What if it was just a game demo by an aspiring designer, unrelated to the "host game"? And not created with company resources? We'd have to get out the person's contracts with the publisher, and start reading ... hmmmm ... just gotta get out my legalese-to-english translator here ...
Except, wait, now it getting easier. Now the word is that the creation of the mini-game was known by Rockstar, and was created in the normal course of business by employees, using textures and models owned by Rockstar. Except it was supposed to be removed for the final published version. That makes the copyright question a lot easier, now it's just like any other game content in GTA: San Andreas.
But, wait, "hot coffee" sounds like a great trademark! Great word of mouth, appeal to anti-establishment youth. Who owns that?
Posted by TobiSaulnier at 06:18 PM | Comments (1)