Was reading this article from the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6938954.stm
What do people think? Is that the right way to go, or because it's only a virtual world, should we not worry?
Dave
Was reading this article from the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6938954.stm
What do people think? Is that the right way to go, or because it's only a virtual world, should we not worry?
Dave
One issue is that Trademarks are different to copyright. To maintain a Trademark the company has to be active in protecting it and can lose the rights if it's shown to have disregarded infringements. That doesn't mean that they have to prosecute each and every infraction, but they have to make a noise if someone is obviously using their Trademark.
I think it's yet another area where technology has outstripped the law and, if it becomes big enough, is an area where the law may have to play catch-up.
It's easy to think that as it's just a virtual world, it doesn't matter. But as soon as the virtual world starts to interact with the real world, problems with crop up. If Dell let you build a virtual PC inside the world, and then will physically build it and ship it to your real-world address, they are NOT going to be happy if someone starts ripping off their IP, virtual or otherwise.
At the moment, I have no idea if this is enough of a problem to be overly worried about the legalities, but if this overlap continues and expands, then it's only a matter of time before some corporation takes legal action to establish exactly what it's virtual IP rights are .... and to protect them, if it can.
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