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Intersecting Interests: Virtual Worlds and the Law

What laws govern a virtual world? What is the role of the Terms of Services Agreement? Do avatars have rights? How are brands protecting themselves from copyright and trademark infringement? How can content creators enjoy the same protections?

James Gatto, head of the Intellectual Property Group at Pillsbury, a leading law firm, joins Robert Bloomfield for a discussion of how national and international laws intersect with issues specific to virtual worlds, discusses current case law, and examines how legal issues affect content creators, virtual world users, and platform owners. He helps to explain the challenges of Terms of Service agreements, examines whether there is such a thing as “property” in a virtual world and whether content creators can, for example, patent content in Second Life, and examines the tensions that can arise between platform owners and the rights of platform users. He examines recent cases related to patent infringement in Second Life, and the Worlds.com patent lawsuit.

A transcript of this show is available on Slideshare.

Guest Biographies

James Gatto

James Gatto serves as leader for Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, a full-service law firm in the energy, financial services, real estate and technology sectors.

James leads the Intellectual Property group at Pillsbury and is co-leader of the firm’s open source team and of their Virtual Worlds & Video Games team. He has nearly 25 years of IP experience and business insights to help companies develop IP strategies that are aligned with their business objectives. His practice focuses on all aspects of intellectual property including patent, trademark, copyright, trade secret, open source and Internet law. His areas of technical focus include computer software, video games, virtual worlds, social networks, user-generated content technology, business methods, Internet-related and e-commerce technology, financial services, bioinformatics, personalized medicine, optics, semiconductors, chemical, mechanical and wireless telecommunications.