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Patent Arcade

In the business of video games, intellectual property protection is critical to success, and Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks are the bricks with which your IP portfolio is built. The Patent Arcade is the web's primary resource for video game IP law, news, cases, and commentary. Editor-in-Chief: Ross Dannenberg, Esq.

News: Virtual World Awards

Posted by Ross Dannenberg (Gamertag: Aviator) on Friday, May 18, 2007.

Well it was really only a matter of time. When an industry gets large enough, we need awards to distinguish the good from the bad. MMOs and Virtual Worlds are the latest addition to the awards fray, with "live" ceremonies to be held in Second Life and Entropia Universe.

Read more here.

I guess it's true: IP begets IP.

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News: Voice in Second Life

Posted by Ross Dannenberg (Gamertag: Aviator) on Thursday, May 17, 2007.

Linden Labs recently added voice capabilities to Second Life. Their beta test went public in March, and commentary has been, for the most part, positive. Voice is a natural extension for MMO games, and introduces new IP issues that will eventually crop up, e.g., voice theft. Digital voice means you can capture someone else's voice relatively easily. Could you create a voice synthesizer based on someone else's speech patterns and tone? Just a thought. In any event, Second Life just got a whole lot more interesting for the rest of the world who doesn't already spend every waking moment as an avatar...

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News: Patent threat against Linux and open source games

Posted by Ross Dannenberg (Gamertag: Aviator) on Monday, May 14, 2007.

(Fortune Magazine) -- May 14, 2007: Free software is great, and corporate America loves it. It's often high-quality stuff that can be downloaded free off the Internet and then copied at will. It's versatile - it can be customized to perform almost any large-scale computing task - and it's blessedly crash-resistant.


There's a shadow hanging over Linux and other free software, and it's being cast by Microsoft (Charts, Fortune 500). The Redmond behemoth asserts that one reason free software is of such high quality is that it violates more than 200 of Microsoft's patents. And as a mature company facing unfavorable market trends and fearsome competitors like Google (Charts, Fortune 500), Microsoft is pulling no punches: It wants royalties. If the company gets its way, free software won't be free anymore.

Read full story here.

Needless to say, this applies to free and open source software (FOSS) games as well.

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