From Lawsuits and Settlements Web site (talking about the California state law factor) ; and story from the Vancouver Sun.

A slightly different take…The Lawsuit and Public Relations, from Gamasutra.  Other lawsuits, after the jump….

Linden Lab “land-owners” sue for the change in Terms of Service over the years

In California… AGAIN… article here at this online mag.

The story from Virtual Worlds News… ; From the Los Angeles Times Business blog;  the always dependable Massively

Linux Users sue for loss of that capability on PS3 (via the latest PSN update “killing” any Linux installation).

Gamespot article here….; and from Kotaku. 

All of these lawsuits are very complicated, and interesting, and I hope to discuss them in full, at a later date.

Jay Moffitt is a Tennessee attorney. This blog is for entertainment and educational purposes only and does not consitute legal advice or create an attorney/client relationship. Jay Moffitt is not certified as a specialist in this area by Tennessee and Tennessee does not certify specialists in this practice area. All comments will be answered promptly and courteously as long as they are germane to the discussion and do not contain specific game names or incidents.

The lawsuits I’m commenting on are strictly the types of actions a small firm is capable of prosecuting or defending, either alone or with co-counsel.  In the broadest terms they seem to fall into three categories.

Today; (I) intellectual property disputes, aka who owns what?  Okay, that is VERY broad, but mainly is

1. developer against publisher (D v P); (Activision/West and all associated litigation)

2. Publisher against Developer (P v D);  (Zynga suing opposing company AND former developer)

3. player/User against publisher/developer (U v P) (not so much p/d against player/user as they simply kick them out of the game or ban them from the forum); (Eros vs Linden Lab, Estavillo vs Sony Network, etc.)

4. third-party claimant that publisher/developer has stolen an idea (or rights) from them (3P v P); (Gibson Guitar vs Harmonix, Stefani vs Activision, Jaffe vs God of War)

5. publisher/developer that OTHER publisher/developer is stealing from them(P v P). (Zynga vs Playdom – over Mafia Wars)

Below, I’ll list the links I have to those stories, (except Activision v West/Zampanella, which I’ve cited twice in the past month)

 Stern vs Sony http://www.onpointnews.com/docs/Stern-v-Sony_MTD_order.pdf

Eros vs Linden Research http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2009/09/linden.pdf

 Estavillo vs Sony http://cdn4.libsyn.com/gamepolitics/Sony-Estavillo.pdf?nvb=20100417202352&nva=20100418203352&t=0708220eacd52243a2bf6

 More on Estavillo http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2009/10/online_game_net.htm

 Jaffe, God of War sued for copyright infringement? http://www.gamepolitics.com/2008/09/17/sony-designer-david-jaffe-sued-alleged-god-war-copyright-infringement

Zynga vs Playdom http://www.scribd.com/doc/16668771/Zynga-Lawsuit

Zynga vs Playdom http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/10/zynga-v-playdom-the-documents

In the broadest terms, these are intellectual property discussions similar to other types of software, or other types of writing (Hollywood screenwriting, book publishing) and the decisions follow along the same precedents.  The new wave of cases, while undecided, are definitely not an entirely new type of law but can be categorized best by the type of plaintiff, and the type of defendant.  This at least gives one a clue as to the relative resources and a good rule-of-thumb in determining the “endgame” of settlement/judgment.  The publicity, while helpful initially, can not substitute for a good legal theory and a line of historical precedent that shows the IP law pertains to your particular situation.  Most of the five situations are fairly equal resources, except #3 is a decided disadvantage to the individual player/user, unless a cogent and applicable class-action label can be applied for and enforced.  The results thus far have been mixed (even though older judgments against AOL and other computer companies along similar lines do give SOME hope).

Types 1 &2, as well as 4 & 5 tend to categorize more towards classic employer/employee law, with a little trade secret precedent for good measure.   

Footnote:  The posting schedule for the next couple of weeks will focus on more serious topics in the beginning of the week (Sunday/Monday), a Mid-week Meat post on something more authoritative or authoritative links (Tuesday/Wednesday), and a Developers Corner post late in the week (Friday/Saturday).  If other posts are made they will be mainly “Breaking News” with little or no commentary.

Jay Moffitt is a Tennessee attorney. This blog is for entertainment and educational purposes only and does not consitute legal advice or create an attorney/client relationship. Jay Moffitt is not certified as a specialist in this area by Tennessee and Tennessee does not certify specialists in this practice area. All comments will be answered promptly and courteously as long as they are germane to the discussion and do not contain specific game names or incidents.

From Pixels and Policy, a great article about the attractiveness of avatars, and how it influences your popularity in virtual worlds.

From a site focusing on gender, gender equality, and other issues, a great article entitled “Real World Beauty Pressures in Second Life.”

A great article on body-concept in Second Life, with a long string of comments.

And another worry (or perhaps laugh?), Virtual Worlds Forum reports that gender swaps are common for online gaming. A tongue-in-cheek article in the Guardian claims to have a reasoning as to why men play as a female avatar in online games. As a related worrying development, it is rumored some games may have gender self-identification systems in the game, article at Destructoid; warning, probably NSFW.

Now I will probably cover these topics a little more as cases are filed, but for now it is probably someone will at some point declare that this would be none of the game publisher’s business, or some player might declare that this is “shocking, just shocking.”

Jay Moffitt is a Tennessee attorney. This blog is for entertainment and educational purposes only and does not consitute legal advice or create an attorney/client relationship. Jay Moffitt is not certified as a specialist in this area by Tennessee and Tennessee does not certify specialists in this practice area. All comments will be answered promptly and courteously as long as they are germane to the discussion and do not contain specific game names or incidents.

The funding money is beginning to be there. It was recently announced that the University of Texas will be using 16 disciplines in Second Life. The details are that “A new, one-year project will set the bar for virtual educational tools as the University of Texas brings 16 campuses into the Second Life world with its Transforming Undergraduate Education system. This plan by researcher and educator Dr. Leslie Jarmon (SL: Bluewave Ogee), recently received a grant to fund the project for a year.” The Linden Lab press release claims “the first statewide rollout of a virtual learning environment in the world.” The release continues to describe the environment as “the initiation of a pioneering statewide virtual learning community of students, faculty, researchers and administrators in Second Life, that offers an innovative, low-cost approach to undergraduate instruction”.

Comments?

Here are some other groundbreaking educational uses for virtual worlds

Autism resources in Virtual Worlds

Swine Flu in Virtual Worlds; Swine Flu Game

QWag changes name to Teleplace; has interactive technology and database integration

US Government resources in Second Life; including Medical resources

Jay Moffitt is a TN attorney. The statements here are not legal advice, and no attorney/client relationship is created. Jay Moffitt claims no certification in this specialty, and TN does not offer a certification in this area of law. Copyright, Jay Moffitt, 2009. Comments are welcomed and will be answered promptly and courteously.

Copy of the public record lawsuit, Eros v Linden Labs, may be found here.
I know to most followers of virtual worlds a lawsuit within Second Life is not news, it’s a huge world, and it is the most litigious by far of the MMOs. (Massivelly Multiplayer Online games)But this one is a class action by Eros, a company that already has two judgments against other in-game players.

Patent Arcade has a short note about the classification of the interests that are claimed for the lawsuit.
Just a little background; for those of you not familiar with Second Life and its litigious history, you may want to review Virtually Blind.  As a fundamental foundation,  the Terms of Service of Second Life give some limited copyright protection to innovators in its virtual world. Uniquely, the Second Life content is almost all user-created, and thus a climate for disagreement over ownership would and could often become a fact.

Well, on to the alleged facts of the case (and pack a lunch). Eros is a provider within Second Life of certain erotic articles for sale. The complaint lays out how the plaintiff alleges the Defendant, Linden Labs (administrator/owner) of Second Life is not protecting plaintiff’s property rights within the game. (Note in the above paragraph hos Second Life TOS does allow some limited property rights, in distinct contravention to most terms of service in MMOs.) The problem is best summarized in a quote from an incredibly on-point article about virtual worlds:, p. 416 “Where the provider does not enforce the contract against a breaching user, it falls to third-party users who have been harmed to attempt to enforce the breaching user’s agreement with the provider–a contract to which the harmed user is not a party due to the hub and spoke nature of multiple separate user agreements with a single provider.” Risch, Michael, Virtual Third Parties, Santa Clara Computer and High Technology Law Journal, Vol. 25, p. 415, 2009.

So the plaintiff, after having in the past sued its fellow players, has resorted to suing the actual service provider. Is this practical legal advice, or going after the “deep pockets”? Opinions vary.

Massively (Daily News About MMOs) has an indepth interview with the CEO of Eros in which he outlines the various prongs of the lawsuit. Filing in California, it uses certain California state law issues, as well as Lanham Act and Trademark Act infringement allegations. The key part of their allegations state “Despite Linden Lab’s actual knowledge of such widespread activity, it has taken no substantive action to prevent, limit, or prohibit such widespread infringement.”

Gameslaw also devotes a short section to the case. It notes as well that it is a further bringing of real-world law into the virtual world, and references an earlier case that first “pierced the veil” on anonymous game players. I agree with its assertion that the primary legal importance of this is its nature as a class-action against the world administrator, rather than an individual against individual case for infringement.

Metaverse Journal takes a conciliatory view and sides partially with Linden Labs. They quote CEO Alderman of Eros, LLC, as saying that Linden Labs is doing 1.2 million per day in virtual transactions. He states that the problem is systemic.

The last article outlining the case, ironically, is New World Notes, a newspaper within Second Life. According to their information, “previous to his career as a virtual adult content entrepreneur, as he relayed in a recent documentary, Kevin Alderman was a plumber. As Stroker Serpentine, however, according to MediaPost, he’s grossed over $1 million dollars in content sales.) Or to put it another way, if Linden Lab had not managed to develop a successful virtual economy, he would probably not have the money to sue Linden Lab. ”

Just a couple of random tidbits to keep you “in the loop” about the scope of such lawsuits:
Roughly 12 percent of Americans, or more than one in 10, have bought a virtual item at some point in the last 12 months, according to a new (July) study by analyst firm Frank N. Magid Associates and commissioned by virtual currency provider PlaySpan., according to Virtual Economies; and directly from Linden Labs: “Now at nearly USD$50 million each month in user-to-user transactions, the Second Life economy is on an annual run rate of more than a half billion US dollars,” from an article by Virtual World News.

This lawsuit should be of interest both from the class-action standpoint and from the virtual-goods standpoint. It will be focused on by legal scholars for years to come.

Jay Moffitt is a TN attorney. His statements do not constitute legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. Jay Moffitt claims no certification in the subject matter, and TN does not offer a certification in the subject matter. Post copyright September 25, 2009.