Trademarks Brands and the Internet is published by: Newton Media Limited Kingfisher House, 21-23 Elmfield Road Bromley, Greater London BR11LT, United Kingdom
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EDITOR’S NOTE
Adapting to the future In 1972, the Magnavox Odyssey was launched. Te world’s first video game console for the home, it had no sound and no colour, but benefited from a plethora of patented technology that would keep its designer, Ralph Baer, in (mostly successful) litigation for more than a decade.
Today, of course, the Magnavox Odyssey is a relic. Consoles have advanced to the point where they can provide an immersive alternative reality, in which players’ journeys through the various games contain many of the challenges and complexities of ‘real life’. With the advent of the Internet, such games can be truly social too. A kid on his Xbox in London might be competing with a woman on hers in Jakarta.
Tis interconnectivity has had wider consequences than just allowing people to play games with others overseas. Games such as Second Life or LittleBigPlanet allow players to permanently change the game environment and share those changes with other players, building virtual spaces and trading virtual goods.
So far, IP rights have played a limited role in these user-created virtual spaces. Tis is partly because gamers themselves tend to be more interested in sharing their online creations than monetising or protecting them, and partly because established rights holders have typically been happy with takedown notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for content that infringes their IP. However, as online content becomes more and more lucrative, the chances of IP becoming a battleground increase. At that point, tricky questions of content ownership arise (whether the player or the platform is responsible for the content created in the game). And as for content that is created in a virtual environment and makes the transition into becoming a real-world brand, well, no-one really knows what will happen.
Te law, and the courts, will have to adapt, as they always do to new technology, but it’s characteristic of the Internet that it provides a particular shock to old systems. As well as video games, in this issue of Trademarks, Brands & the Internet we take a look at the complex IP position of TV streaming services. With different decisions from courts on either side of the US, not to mention different views across the Atlantic, the TV streaming debate is like a supercharged version of the Betamax copyright battle of the 1980s.
Te irony is that a medium which is by its nature global can be policed only according to the local laws (and occasionally judicial whims) of individual jurisdictions. How to rectify that situation is of course, another matter.
Peter Scott, Managing editor EDITORIAL PANEL
Ben Allgrove, partner, Baker & McKenzie Safir Anand, senior partner, Anand & Anand Andy Churley, group marketing director, Netnames Annick Mottet Haugaard, president, European Communities Trade Mark Association Gretchen Olive, policy & industry affairs, CSC Global Susan Prosser, vice president, partner & industry relations, Domain Tools Maggie Ramage, immediate past-president, Institute of Trade Mark Attorneys Petter Rindforth, partner, Fenix Legal David Taylor, partner, Hogan Lovells Jonathan Zuck, president, Association for Competitive Technology
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