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Video Game Law Blog
Current issues in video game law.
| BarTalk recently published an article about blawging and had some kind words for our blog. Who wouldn't want to talk about video game lawyers and video game law, you ask? Definitely not the two [read more]Saturday, 16 February 2008 |
| Australia’s Office of Film and Literature Classification has banned the sale of Digital Extremes' Dark Sector in Australia. The Office was particularly concerned about the game’s “high- [read more]Saturday, 16 February 2008 | Chris Bennett |
| Square Enix, the Tokyo-based creator of the Final Fantasy franchise, has filed a federal lawsuit for copyright infringement against four wholesalers whom Square Enix claims were selling unlicensed [read more]Thursday, 14 February 2008 |
| In 2002 Ubisoft signed a deal with MGA Entertainment to publish video games based on the Bratz doll IP. In 2003 MGA tried to terminate the contract on the basis that Ubisoft was not meeting its obligations [read more]Wednesday, 13 February 2008 | David Spratley |
| This is not breaking news, but it's interesting nonetheless. A lawsuit filed last summer shows that one of the founders of the IGE (a virtual property business which lets customers buy and sell [read more]Wednesday, 13 February 2008 | David Spratley |
| Business in Vancouver recently ran an interesting article about virtual property and divorce. It includes quotes from one of our Vancouver video game lawyers, Chris Bennett.
Article here.
[read more]Sunday, 10 February 2008 |
| According to a weekend report from Afterdawn, the Finnish Christian Democratic Party (CDP) is pushing for a new domestic video game inspection regime. The CDP, which holds only 7 of the 200 seats [read more]Wednesday, 6 February 2008 |
| Silicon Knights and Epic Games have been embroiled in a lawsuit over the Unreal Engine 3 for some time now. According to recent reports, Silicon Knights has filed subpoenas on several Unreal Engine [read more]Tuesday, 5 February 2008 | David Spratley |
| The UK Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that a TV ad for Midway's "Stranglehold" cannot be shown on British television because the ad encourages and promotes violence. The decision [read more]Tuesday, 5 February 2008 | David Spratley |
| In 2005 we reported that Roller Coaster Tycoon developer Chris Sawyer had sued Atari for US$5 million in respect of royalties he claimed Atari owed him. Sawyer also claimed that Atari breached a licensing [read more]Tuesday, 5 February 2008 | Chris Bennett |
| New Mexico’s 1% excise tax bill HB583 is presently under review by the House Business & Industry Committee. It is reported that, if passed, it will become law on January 1, 2009 and would [read more]Friday, 1 February 2008 | Pablo Guzman |
| The State of California is the site of an ongoing battleground between free speech advocates and legislators seeking to limit access to violent video games.
A law passed by the State Legislature [read more]Wednesday, 30 January 2008 | Michael Coburn |
| Sony Computer Entertainment Europe is facing claims of trade-mark infringement from Buzztime Entertainment, a California-based maker of interactive electronic trivia games that are often found in [read more]Wednesday, 30 January 2008 |
| Despite a successful appeal to the British Video Appeals Committee (see our previous coverage), it appears Rockstar Games is still not able to release the controversial Manhunt 2 in the UK. On January [read more]Wednesday, 30 January 2008 |
| Take-Two Interactive has announced details of its compensation plan for gamers who purchased copies of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas before July 20, 2005 - the version which contains the sexually-explicit [read more]Wednesday, 30 January 2008 |
| After announcing that its MMO, Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising, would be put on hold so that it could focus on Star Trek Online, Perpetual Entertainment was sued by its former PR firm, Kohnke Communications [read more]Tuesday, 29 January 2008 | Tudor Carsten |
| The class-action lawsuit against IGE is moving ahead, slowly but surely. That lawsuit, filed on behalf of all World of Warcraft players, alleges that IGE (by gold farming, spamming, etc.) has prevented [read more]Tuesday, 29 January 2008 | Tudor Carsten |
| The Society of Authors, Composers and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN), the collective society mandated to collect royalties for musical works in Canada, proposed a tariff to the Copyright Board [read more]Wednesday, 23 January 2008 |
| Following its demise this summer, “self-styled” virtual bank Ginko Financial was thought to have disappeared into the ether - literally. It appears to have indirectly reared its less than [read more]Tuesday, 22 January 2008 | Sarah Dale-Harris |
| Reported statistics about on-line gaming in China are pretty staggering: there are about 40.2 million on-line gamers, and 2007 on-line game sales exceeded $1.46 billion. The flip side is growing concern [read more]Friday, 18 January 2008 | David Spratley |
| We commented last week on the Texas lawsuit against Microsoft which was prompted by the problems XBOX Live experienced over the holiday season (see our previous post). The plaintiffs' lawyer has [read more]Thursday, 17 January 2008 | David Spratley |
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GamePolitics cites various sources which claim that the Indian government is contemplating legislation banning violent video games. It's not clear what form the ban might take (for [read more]Thursday, 17 January 2008 | David Spratley |
| Attention all game business people in the Metro Toronto area: The GameON Finance Forum is taking place on January 17 and 18 in Toronto.
we're proud to say that Sarah Dale-Harris, one of our [read more]Wednesday, 16 January 2008 | David Spratley |
| A 20-year-old man was recently arrested an charged with stalking a 15-year-old-girl. This appears to be another situation where the initial contact between the parties was on-line (in this case apparently [read more]Wednesday, 16 January 2008 | Michael Coburn |
| Nintendo and Sony have been the latest video game manufacturers to be accused of infringing patents in producing video game controllers. Copper Innovations Group has commenced lawsuits in Pennsylvania [read more]Wednesday, 16 January 2008 | Michael Coburn |
| Hasbro, the owner of the board game SCRABBLE, has sued Facebook for copyright infringement, claiming that the Scrabulous game on Facebook violates Hasbro’s copyright in SCRABBLE. Hasbro is keen [read more]Wednesday, 16 January 2008 | Chris Bennett |
| Two brave entrepreneurs have finally ventured into the frontier of virtual intellectual property protection and have opened a “Second Life Patent and Trademark Office” at www.slpto.com [read more]Tuesday, 15 January 2008 | Sarah Dale-Harris |
| In the wake of the collapse of “Ginko Financial” in August 2007 and a significant number of Resident complaints that in-world “banks” are defaulting on their promises, Linden [read more]Friday, 11 January 2008 | Sarah Dale-Harris |
| In an effort to expand its portfolio and in the hopes of securing a leading competitive position in the RPC, action and adventure genres, Electronic Arts has completed its acquisition of VG Holding [read more]Tuesday, 8 January 2008 | Sarah Dale-Harris |
| It’s a good question, especially in the US where the legislation is regularly struck down as being unconstitutional. Maybe the answer, in part, is that some people don’t know where to [read more]Monday, 7 January 2008 | Chris Bennett |
| Microsoft's XBOX Live network, an on-line system which allows subscribers to access content and play games over the Internet, experienced difficulties over the holiday season due increased demand [read more]Monday, 7 January 2008 | David Spratley |
| A US district court has denied an injunction application that would have stopped the sale of "Guitar Hero Encore: Rock the 80s". The application was brought by The Romantics, who sued Activision [read more]Wednesday, 19 December 2007 | David Spratley |
| An interesting story out of Texas where GamesRadar has been charged by the Texas Attorney General with failing to protect the privacy and safety of children.
The charge stemmed from an alleged [read more]Tuesday, 18 December 2007 | Michael Coburn |
| A game counterfeiter in Richmond B.C., a suburb of Vancouver, has plead guilty to counterfeiting video games for a variety of game systems.
The counterfeiter was fined $25,000 and was forced to [read more]Tuesday, 18 December 2007 | Michael Coburn |
| Activision is facing another lawsuit over its Guitar Hero game. Recall that The Romantics sued Activision over "Guitar Hero Encore: Rock the 80s" back in November (see our post here). Now [read more]Friday, 14 December 2007 | David Spratley |
| The Seoul Central District Court recently issued copyright infringement sentences to the producers and directors of a music video for Korean singer “Ivy”. The video used portions of the [read more]Thursday, 13 December 2007 | Chris Bennett |
| In separate press releases, Atari has announced a settlement of its dispute with FUNimation over licensing of the Dragon Ball Z name as well as its further borrowing of $4M from BlueBay.
The $4M [read more]Tuesday, 11 December 2007 | Tudor Carsten |
| The CBC recently published an article on Canadian businesses in Second Life. The article, written by Luigi Benetton, mentions Davis LLP's office in Second Life and features some spunky quotes [read more]Monday, 10 December 2007 |
| Rockstar's difficulties with Manhunt 2 have been widely reported. The game was initially banned in the UK, and Rockstar appealed that decision (see our previous post).
Today, the 7-person [read more]Monday, 10 December 2007 | David Spratley |
| Apple has recently filed US patent application no. 20070279394 for "Techniques for Interactive Input to Portable Electronic Devices." The application discloses a technology that will allow [read more]Monday, 10 December 2007 | David Spratley |
| A US law firm has filed a class action lawsuit in the US on behalf of certain shareholders of Giant Interactive Group Inc., the game company in China that operates ZT Online.
The lawsuit claims [read more]Wednesday, 5 December 2007 | Chris Bennett |
| We reported back in November about a lawsuit by a group of Second Life merchants against Thomas Simon ("Rase Kenzo" in SL) and for making and selling unauthorized copies of the plaintiffs' [read more]Wednesday, 5 December 2007 | David Spratley |
| Here's a profile of video game and intellectual property lawyer Chris Bennett that recently appeared in the Financial Post Business Magazine. It's apparently the side profile... [read more]Wednesday, 5 December 2007 |
| A Hong Kong court has ordered Nintendo to remove from its website a press release relating to litigation between it and Supreme Factory Limited ("Supreme"). Supreme has been accused of infringing [read more]Wednesday, 5 December 2007 | Tudor Carsten |
| A pair of white-hat hackers claim to have found a vulnerability in Second Life (through an issue with QuickTime, which is used to stream videos in SL) that allows them to lift Lindens (SL's in-game [read more]Tuesday, 4 December 2007 | David Spratley |
| A US man says that his Wii provided evidence of his wife's improprieties. Here's the story: When the man returned home from serving in Iraq, friends and family told him that his wife had cheated [read more]Tuesday, 4 December 2007 | David Spratley |
| The merger between Activision and Vivendi's game division (which includes Blizzard Entertainment), will create a challenger to Electronic Arts for the title of world's biggest publisher. Though [read more]Monday, 3 December 2007 | Tudor Carsten |
| Australia’s federal classification board, the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC), has awarded a MA15+ rating to a revised version of Activision’s Soldier of Fortune: Payback [read more]Friday, 30 November 2007 |
| Rockstar Games, publisher of the ultra violent Manhunt 2 video game, continue to push for a the UK ban on the game to be lifted.
In an appeal to the Video Appeals Committee, Rockstar's legal [read more]Thursday, 29 November 2007 | Michael Coburn |
| In what we like to imagine was the legal equivalent of the frenzied combat in "300", Game publisher Playlogic appears to have triumphed over game developer World Forge in a dispute over [read more]Thursday, 29 November 2007 | Tudor Carsten |
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