Electronic Arts, Inc. (“EA”), the premier video game developer and publisher, is going on the offensive. Its latest hit, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, was a phenomenal success, selling 8 million copies in the first month of its release. EA wants to enjoy the hefty profits being produced and make [...]
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The U.S. Army is attempting to harness some of the innovative technology and creative thinking that gave us Hollywood blockbusters Avatar and Inception to help veterans combat nightmares associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 52% of veterans with PTSD report having frequent [...]
Continue Reading →Ubisoft’s “Call of Juarez: The Cartel” has once again sparked debate over violent video games, but this time there’s a twist: players get to participate in a bloody street war that is actually occurring in their own backyard. The controversy surrounding the game is not only based on [...]
Continue Reading →Yesterday the Supreme Court heard opening oral arguments in the case of Schwarzenegger v. The Entertainment Merchants Association and Entertainment Software Association, a case that could decide the legal status of video games.
The California law at issue would levy fines against retailers who rent or sell video games depicting “especially heinous, cruel, or depraved violence, such [...]
Continue Reading →Whether we like it or not, video games have become an undeniable force in our world. Gone (mostly) are the days where I find an afternoon wasted on NBA Jam or Mario Kart, but I also realize that the N64 I purchased in seventh grade with birthday money is unlikely to be the last console I ever [...]
Continue Reading →In European news, Switzerland has taken a giant leap in the effort to regulate video games. Recently, the country’s parliament passed two resolutions concerning the sale of violent video games. The first resolution, proposed by Christian Democratic Party member and National Councillor Norbert Hochreutener, would make it illegal to sell PEGI 16 [...]
Continue Reading →Ed O’Bannon, a marketing director for an auto dealership in Las Vegas, may play a pivotal role in forever changing how the NCAA does business. O’Bannon was a star basketball player for UCLA in the mid-1990s, and now he’s at the forefront of a class action antitrust lawsuit against [...]
Continue Reading →The Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law is pleased to present three more abstracts from its most recent issue, which was released in May of 2009. The first three abstracts can be found here. Below are the summaries for Patenting Games: Baker v. Selden Revisited, by Shubha Ghosh; Law and the [...]
Continue Reading →The Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law recently released its latest issue containing 11 articles on virtual worlds and user-generated content. Below are the abstracts from three of those articles: A First Amendment of Second Life: What Virtual Worlds Mean for the Law of Video Games, by Marc Jonathan Blitz; The [...]
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