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Week 9 Guest Commentator – Andy Moore

Week 9 Guest Commentator – Andy Moore

Andy Moore will be joining us as a Guest Commentator in class next week. Andy is a programmer by trade (but a teacher at heart), and has helped game studios and other digital-media companies as a consultant, contractor, and specialist; focusing in the fields of rapid development, prototyping, data collection & analysis, and the “lean […]

News of the Week; October 30, 2013

1. Glen Greenwald: Edward Snowden’s Actions Inspired by Video Games and Comic Books 2. Star Citizen reaches $25 million in funding  3. How Forza 5 and the Xbox One use the cloud to drive machine-learning AI 4. Wind Waker, GTA V, and the beauty of the videogame selfie 5. “Phoenix Wright Dual Destinies” Review: Still appealing 6. AT&T Files Patent […]

Special Issue  of UBC Law Review on “Digital Media, Video Games, And The Law” is out..

Special Issue of UBC Law Review on “Digital Media, Video Games, And The Law” is out..

Vol 46 No 3 (September 2013) – UBC Law Review Society There are now 3 copies on reserve in the library which could be very useful (depending on topic) as you craft papers for the course. jon

Exam Question as a Paper Topic

Exam Question as a Paper Topic

Last year as a bit of a lark wrote up an exam question (yes, in a non exam course). Though it looks like the tech involved is not being incorporated into the next generation of gaming hardware, the issues are still live ones. As they may inspire a paper (or two) am posting the faux […]

Bitcoin currency valuation through the roof

Bitcoin currency valuation through the roof

Glad to be the first to post this.  The headline is that a man who purchased $27 of bitcoin peer-to-peer digital currency in 2009 and forgot about it discovered that it’s now worth $886 000. Also, cheers to Vancouver for having the world’s first bitcoin ATM (link in article).  There are lots of fascinating implications […]

Scandinavia, Switzerland & Nollywood

Scandinavia, Switzerland & Nollywood

In last week’s class there was an interesting though brief discussion around the possible correlation between weak IP countries and strong creative presence. This grew out of an article written by the Law Librarian at Rutgers last year which pointed out a correlation between strong economies and weak IP laws. What I wished for in […]

Week 8 Guest Speaker – Jennifer Kelly

Week 8 Guest Speaker – Jennifer Kelly

Our guest this week is one of foremost litigators of video game related cases. Jennifer Kelly is at Fenwick & West in San Francisco. She will be speaking to us about imitation, originality and genres in games.. From Jennifer’s Linked In profile: “I am a partner in the Intellectual Property and Technology Litigation Group at […]

Week 7 – 10/23/13: “What’s it all about…Beta?” & Anoop Desai

Week 7 – 10/23/13: “What’s it all about…Beta?” & Anoop Desai

The video of Anoop’s great guest appearance is not included, but his slides (& mine) are available below.     jon

3D printing and IP

3D printing and IP

This article by Deven Desai & Gerard Magliocca gives a good overview of the ramifications of 3D printing for all three areas of IP (copyright, patent and trademark). http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2338067 I agree with the characterization of 3D printing as a continuation of the digitization of commodities that began with music and video files by extending it […]

News of the Week; October 23, 2013

1. Blizzard wins $7M judgment in World of Warcraft bot lawsuit  2. “The Legal Status of Video Games: Comparative Analysis in National Approaches” by Andy Ramos, Anxo Rodriguez, Tim Meng, Stan Abrams and Laura Lopez (WIPO)  3. Gaming adds $2.3 billion to Canada’s GDP  + Canada’s Video Game Industry in 2013 (Nordicity Report)  4. British Newspaper Confuses Deus Ex […]