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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
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
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
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
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
The video of Anoop’s great guest appearance is not included, but his slides (& mine) are available below. jon
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 […]
WIPO Study on Copyright in Video Games
Just in time for (some of) your papers, the World Intellectual Property Organization has released a study called “The Legal Status of Video Games: Comparative Analysis in National Approaches”. Lots of useful information, but as always appropriate academic consideration should be given in assessing the study to the agenda and mandate of the funding organization. From the […]
Week 6 – 10/16/13: “Ten Cases – Ten Clauses – Ten Contexts” & Roch Ripley Part 2
Here are the slides and video of the class. Note especially Roch Ripley’s trenchant and useful critique of the first part of the course as embodied in my previous slides. That said – “Switzerland”…really? jon