As comedian Myq Kaplan says, “There’s a spectrum of dorkery from people who use words like dorkery and those who do not.” When Starcraft II was released on July 23, I was one of the millions of uberdorks around the world whose preorder instantly made it the fastest and best-selling computer game of 2010. As an additional testament to my dorkery, I soon thereafter identified a myriad of legal issues with the game.

Number one, the game destroys graphics cards (especially in laptops) because Activision-Blizzard forgot to include a framerate cap. This small oversight caused thousands of graphics cards like mine to overheat and die during game play. Huge potential for a class-action lawsuit? Possibly, but not very interesting, academically.

Number two, the game has a gigantic, mechanized soldier unit based on Arnold Schwarzenegger called the “Thor” (yielding the optimal blend of dorkery and machismo). But alas, as any Arnold aficionado can immediately tell, the Thor is voiced by a sound-alike and not the actual Governator. This made me wonder: did Arnold license his right of publicity forStarcraft II, or does the First Amendment give Activision-Blizzard the right to use Arnold’s likeness without his permission? Continue reading the full story . . . »

Documentary filmmaking is an intellectual property minefield. The entire undertaking is imperiled by the potential for copyright and trademark infringement. Then there are numerous state law pitfalls such as violating someone’s right of publicity or invading someone’s privacy.

And until recently, documentarians could also run afoul of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) for circumventing the digital locks on DVDs that prevent copying in order to access and incorporate high-quality film clips into their documentaries.

Last week, the Copyright Office made headlines by expressly legalizing the jailbreaking of iPhones. But over the excitement generated by 1337 hax0rs and tech geeks everywhere, you may not have heard the quiet sigh of relief emanating from documentary filmmakers everywhere, as the Copyright Office also finally granted a DMCA exception for documentary filmmaking. (Other sounds that may have resulted from the Copyright Office’s ruling: tittering giggles over the fact that one of the new regulations applies to something called a dongle.) Continue reading the full story . . . »

For the uninitiated, M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender is a big screen rendition of an immensely popular Nickelodeon television show called “Avatar: The Last Airbender.” Due to the release of James Cameron’s Avatar, which shattered box-office sales records worldwide, Paramount Pictures decided to scrap the first part of the show’s title for the film. Thankfully, The Last Airbender wasn’t also based on the novel by Sapphire — otherwise, we would have been in for a world of confusion. Instead, it looks like we’re just in for a world of controversy. Continue reading the full story . . . »

On November 14, 2007, then-candidate Barack Obama gave a speechat Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California in which he promised, “I will take a back seat to no one in my commitment to network neutrality. Because once providers start to privilege some applications or websites over others, then the smaller voices get squeezed out and we all lose.”

Less than a year after President Obama took office, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) opened a formal debate on network neutrality. Just over a month ago, however, a federal court’sdecision threw a monkey wrench into the FCC’s plans to fulfill President Obama’s commitment. Continue reading the full story . . . »

As anyone who plays video games these days knows, computer-generated representations of real people have become both increasingly commonplace and incredibly realistic. So much so, that a new area of litigation has emerged: right of publicity lawsuits for the unauthorized use of a person’s likeness in a video game.

Right of Publicity Law

The basic idea of the right of publicity is quite simple. Under the laws of most states, a person has the right to control the commercial use of his or her identity or “likeness.” This right encompasses all of a person’s distinctive characteristics, e.g., the sound of a chanteuse’s voice; a basketball star’s former name; or even a race car driver’s distinctive racing car. Traditionally, right of publicity lawsuits have been filed over unauthorized uses of a celebrity’s likeness in advertisements (usually television commercials): Continue reading the full story . . . »

There is an old Chinese proverb which cautions against drawing attention to something you are trying to conceal. As the story goes, a man named Zhang built a small fortune of 300 ounces of silver through hard work. Fearful that someone might steal his fortune, Zhang decided that the best thing to do was bury it. After burying the money, Zhang then had a brilliant idea to further ensure his money’s security. He decided to mark the spot with a sign that read: “This land does not have 300 ounces of silver buried here.” Continue reading the full story . . . »