Videogame Broadcasting: Exploring a Growing Industry’s Struggle with Copyright Claims
Zachary Greenberg In the videogame industry, tournament play is crucial for game publishers in creating a loyal fan base. Tournament play has spurred the development of third-party markets including streaming, commentary, and “modding”—creating complementary software for existing games. This essay will examine the intertwined industries of videogames and streaming tournaments, and their turbulent relationship with copyright law through a case study of Super Smash Bros. Melee. In addition to exploring Nintendo’s valid claims for protection under copyright law, this essay will analyze possible solutions to streaming copyright violations utilizing the fair use defense, including wider industry changes like implementing mechanical...
Google’s Literary Quest in Peril
Michael Goldstein Recently, Google, Inc. (hereinafter “Google”), owner of the eponymous search engine, partnered with several libraries, in an effort to make their collections available for search on the Internet. This project has come under attack by The Author’s Guild (hereinafter “The Guild”). The Guild complains that scanning and uploading copyrighted works without the authors’ consent violates their rights under the Copyright Act. Google counters that its use of sections from the copyrighted works falls under the “fair use” doctrine described in the Copyright Act. However, the Guild notes that in order to use these sections, Google first reproduced the...
Been Deep Linked? Apparent Authority Might Link You to Liability
Tan Pham Current trends in trademark law have not met the issue of deep linking with open arms. To date, there is a dearth of cases that touch on deep linking and trademark infringement. Cases such as Ticketmaster Corp. v. Tickets.com dismissed claims of deep linking as trademark infringement with little explanation, simply stating that deep linking itself is not a trademark violation absent “confusion of source.” Yet, there is no case to set the boundaries at the other end of when deep linking would be trademark infringement; it can be implied then that the traditional tests of likelihood of confusion would most...