Intellectual Property and Law

Thanks for clearing it up, Kidd. And thanks for pointing out that it isn't as easy as saying "I created it myself, it may look similar and work similar but who cares". A judge might care.

@Aleister@Kiddne thing you are missing (probablly because of lack of investigation into this particular case). The "original creator" used someone else's idea in the first place. For her to claim "IP" on a ~lightsaber~ is stupid.

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Lucas Arts would have a legal point IF they held copyright/trademark on the item/idea of a "lightsaber". and IF they cared enough to look up every little instance of people using the item/name. Howver, that's a dead end road for them because people will just call their lightsabers "laserswords" or something else. If LA can use their brain, maybe the ret of the sue-happy SL community can get a grip as well.

Also, comparing SL to RL is an exercise in futility. As I stated, our RL is messed up in places. Why would we want to recreate the mistakes here? You know, the ones that let old women sue resturants because the coffee was hot and they were so stupid as to burn themselves with it.

Save the angst for real thieves (the ones that misuse and exploit the system) and let those with a creative bent alone.

Specifially, in this parcticular case, the product in question has a freely distributed, open-sourced package on the market to provide the basic tools to create variants of the product. I'd be very shocked if the "orginal creator" didn't just use one of these packages herself.

The HUD driven interface is given away in nearly every place that caters to this genre, as are the scripts, animations and basic prim builds.

This is called "freedom of creativity". ie Someone created the package, set it up, then gave it away to promote creativity and diversity. Sorta the whole idea of SL. Funny how that works.

~Jessy

If the object is indeed a lightsaber, the discussion is moot. Both creators possibly aren't allowed to sell a lightsaber that looks very similar to an original SW movie prop, and if they even call it a lightsaber it's a clear copyright infringement on both sides, as far as I'm aware. They can create it as a freebie though, that's simply fan art.

I would love to see a case like this on Judge Judy. Is that still on? Or maybe the People's Court.

I'm sorry to be argumentative, but BEFORE you talk about infringing on intellectual property you have to line out what the property is. Obviously the script in question was protected, forcing the guy who copied the item to write his own from scratch, so copyright on the code wouldn't be valid. So... the functionality? If someone makes a can opener, another person can't make things that open cans?

What else, the "style"? As I said, it would be like one fashion designer claiming that wearing a scarf a certain way is his trademark. Well, folks, we register trademarks. We patent innovations. History is littered with people who didn't protect their IP and regretted it.

It's easy to take something as complex as intellectual property law and twist it into some common sense idea of fairness, but it is anything but. Copyright would not apply here. Trademark, patent infringement wouldn't apply here. This isn't a derivative work because nothing of the original is used in the creation. This isn't a sample drumbeat or too many words excerpted from a novel.

So, you have someone who made something interesting, and someone else who made one, too. If today I decide to patent the kite, and tell everyone else they can't make one, I have to get to work making it my property. If this person wants this to be exclusively theirs, they need to do what is necessary to make it so.

Until then, they're blowing smoke.

Ah, but the sellers can give the lightsaber away and just sell the scripts in them. LL owns LSL, not Lucas Arts. *shrugs* And anyway, LA won't give a darn about 80 cents. Though I wish they would. LA in SL would advance things at "light speed" *Grins*

And LA hardly has the market on laser swords. Thundar the Barbarian anyone? AS to the name "lightsaber"; that I'd ahve to look and see if LA trademarked the name. I don't think they did, but could be wrong. I think it's just items like "blaster" or "droid" are. Now "Millinium Falcon" is slightly different.

Anyone know where to look up what specific companies have copyrighted/trademarked? It's not something the average person knows.

~Jessy

Well, there I disagree a little. No one needs to compare SL to RL; as soon as I create something unique enough in SL (without infringing on anyone's copyrights), I do have a very real copyright / IP right, and a copyright breach in SL is a very real copyright infringement. Freedom of creativity goes only so far, in both worlds.

It has nothing to do with being sue-happy; I make a living in SL, and if someone came along and tried to rip off the rather unique parts of my work, I'll have to sue in order to protect my income. If LL had a world in mind where all content is free for everyone (as some of their statements, like "A mere infringement isn't theft" suggest), they should have taken a different road. Without a virtual currency that can be converted into real money, without expensive land fees and without the parts of their website that are meant to attract mercantilists.

I saw someone selling a flexi mini skirt on slx who was in my store once and might have seen that I had a flexi mini skirt! It was even the same color!

Sometimes its easier on your pocketbook and your mind to think "oh, they liked my stuff so much it inspired them to try to be like meeee". If you still think that you've been infringed upon and want to see what your rights are in protecting what you feel has been stolen from you then its always best to cya and find out from someone who actually knows.

To my knowledge there are several photobooth flashing light thingys out there if that is in fact the item in question. I'm sure it was one person who started the idea and others found inspiration in thier work and tried to add or remove features to specialize it to what they were in fact wanting. Or maybe it was cheaper to create thier own prims? Or..maybe they wanted to see how it worked and test thier own creative ability in making the scripts or objects themselves? I don't know but I know I started making my own clothes because I didn't find exactly what I liked but I have several things that are just similar to other peoples cuz there's only so many ways to make a bikini! I know I"ve seen houses I liked in SL and tried to make a similar house on my own. I guess the person who inspired me should be thankful to know that I suck at lining up prims and am never happy with my own object creating

So many loopholes, so little time to find them all...

Then look through history. ((Data pulled from Lucas Arts webpages detailing "lightsabers outside of Star Wars"). If LA can understand crativity, I think we can here in SL.

Although Star Wars popularized the concept of laser swords, the idea existed long before the release of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. The weapons have appeared in various non-Star Wars media. Often these appearances are references and homages to Star Wars, as is the case in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

1. In a scene from Oh Heavenly Dog, actor Chevy Chase arrives in Heaven only to find a "lightsaber" being used as a kind of classroom pointer. The man using it mentions "we got the idea from Star Wars."
   
2. In the MMORPG MapleStory, players can purchase lightsaber like weapons from the Cash Shop ("Blazing Sword," "Laser Sword" which come in common lightsaber colors such as blue, red, and green.
   
3. In a scene from Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Bugs Bunny once drew out a lightsaber with his carrot as saber hilt to deflect laser bolts shot from Marvin the Martian.
   
4. In Diablo II from Blizzard, there's a unique phase blade called Lightsabre, which deals lethal amounts of lightning element damage.
   
5. In the Japanese-French animated series Ulysses 31 the hero Ulysses owns a weapon that is a combination of a lightsaber and a laser gun. Not only does Ulysses 31 borrow the concept of the lightsaber, it also makes use of components of the original sound effects that Ben Burtt fabricated, such as the snap-hiss of ignition.
   
6. In the popular game series, Super Smash Brothers a laser sword is an obtainable melee weapon during gameplay. The sword has a pink blade, and resembles a lightsaber.
   
7. Star of the Guardians is a series of four science-fiction / space opera novels written by Margaret Weis in which a patently lightsaber-inspired weapon is used by elite main characters.
   
8. Lightsabers also found their way overseas to Japan in the popular series Mobile Suit Gundam, which started shortly after the release of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. In the Gundam series the lightsaber's name was changed to beam saber, and they were only operable by the Mobile Suits. The beam saber continued from the original Gundam series to the latest Gundam show Gundam Seed Destiny. Beam sabers are possibly the only way to effectively damage or destroy a Gundam and come in various designs, ranging from the standard sword design to pikes, tridents and scythes. The design and look of the standard beam saber is generally identical to the standard lightsaber.
   
9. In a filler episode of the anime Naruto, a character uses a weapon dubbed the Raijin sword (Lightning God's sword), which was a hilt, but once activated, projected a yellow blade of energy which made suspiciously lightsaberesque sounds. Ironically, it cracked after being hit by an attack, and was then shattered by another attack.
   
10. In the PlayStation 2 game Jak II Baron Praxis uses a green lightsaber when he tries to kill Kor and in the sequel, Jak 3, the precursor robot uses a big red lightsaber and also in .
    
11. Of similar design are the laserblades in the Armored Core series, which are generally equipped onto the AC's left hand, though weapon variants exists, whether usable by the player or not.
    
12. Lightsabers also appeared in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, in which the wielders took them directly from Episode IV, after seeing the films.
    
13. In Transformers, the Energon weapons look and sound similar to lightsabers, but are shaped like other weapons such as axes and flails.
    
14. Lightsaber type weapons are used on numerous occasions as futuristic batons or "remote" pinatas striker by the 30th century New New York Police in the cartoon "Futurama".
    
15. Lightsabers possibly inspired the photon weaponry of the Phantasy star game series by Sega - the saber and brand weapons are nearly identical to green and blue lightsabers respectively - although the swords aren't the only weapons that display an energy edge as nearly all weapons are modeled as such.
    
16. A lightsaber-esque weapon (called a beam saber) is wielded by Zero of the Megaman X and Megaman Zero games created by Capcom, variant from a normal Lightsaber in that it is more flexible, and can shoot waves of energy. In the Japanese form of X1 (And possibly others), Zero's saber has the same sound effects of those from Star Wars.
    
17. The Gameboy RPG, The Final Fantasy Legend, has a weapon called the L. Saber; presumably a lightsaber.
    
18. In the movie Spaceballs, Lone Starr and Dark Helmet have a battle with weapons similar to lightsabers. Instead of a hilt, it was a ring. That is the main difference between the Star Wars and the Spaceballs versions.
    
19. In Ratchet & Clank: Up your Arsenal, a cheat code allows you to wield a double-bladed saber (like Darth Maul's, but purple).
    
20. In the movie, Spy Kids, Carmen gets a spy weapon that resembles a mini lightsaber. When she activates it, a 4-5 inch red blade comes out, making the same sound as used in the Star Wars movies. Also, when waved around, the sounds imitate an actual lightsaber.
    
21. In Mortal Kombat: Armageddon two characters, Cyrax and Sektor, wield lightsaber-like weapons called Pulse Blades. Cyrax (a "good" character) wields a green weapon, while Sektor (an "evil" character) uses two red blades in tandem.
    
22. In the video game Viewtiful Joe: Double Trouble, there is a point in a level where you fight an enemy wielding a weapon that resembles a green lightsaber.
    
23. The miniature tabletop wargame/RTS franchise Warhammer 40,000, there are many lightsaber-ish weapons, collectively refered to as "Power Weapons", such as Power Swords, Lightning Claws (gauntlets with three to four small power sword blades affixed on/between the knuckles), and Force Weapons (power weapons attuned to a user's psychic field). There also exist C'Tan Phase Blades, which sit between realspace and The Warp, which allows them to ignore sheilding, Daemonic auras, and armor.
    
24. In the movie Wrongfully Accused, a spoof of the Harrison Ford movie The Fugitive, the usher at a concert guides the main character to his seat with a lightsaber.
    
25. In Kingdom Hearts II, the main villain and final boss Xemnas uses two red lightsaber-like weapons that can also act as small, blaster like, laser projectiles.
    
26. Many fans have created their own lightsabers.
    
27. In an episode of Jimmy Neutron, Jimmy and his nemesis fight each other with what is a scientific version of the fictional lightsaber. Coincidentally, Jimmy's nemesis's blade is red.
    
28. In the Japanese Tokusatsu franchise Kamen Rider, the Rider Black RX wields a lightsaber-like weapon called the Ribolcane, which he typically uses to impale monsters as a finishing move.
    
29. In the Eidos Interactive's PlayStation 2 game, EOE: Eve of Extinction the Legacy weapons resemble Lightsaber-like weapons.
    
30. In the popular First Person Shooter games Halo, a weapon favored by the Elites, called the Energy Sword (Plasma Sword in the first game) seems to build on the same idea as the ones from Star Wars. In the first game it looked quite similar to the one from Star Wars, yet in the second it bears no resemblance to the one from star wars.
    
31. In the Crash Bandicoot game Crash Twinsanity, the henchmen of the Evil Twins, called ants, sometimes carry lightsabers.
    
32. In the animated seriesThundarr the Barbarian, Thundarr's weapon of choice, the "Sun Sword", projects a blade-like beam of energy when activated, and can be deactivated so that it is only a hilt, just like a lightsaber.
    
33. The Ultimate Marvel universe features a character called the Colonel, who wields a weapon which closely resembles a double-bladed lightsaber (another superhero even made a remark about it having been stolen from Darth Maul). This weapon had a remarkable cutting power. However, it was eventually revealed that it had solid blades.
    

Huh? You can't copyright a lightsaber. A copyright applies to a particular expression of an idea or information in one of several defined media. You can't copyright the idea itself. At best LA, assuming they created a working lightsaber, could patent the process that makes it work. Or they can trademark the word 'lightsaber' itself or even an image of it, such as with a logo. Even so, i can legally and ethically create the expression of a lightsaber in any medium i wish, as long as it doesn't infringe on a substantially similar expression of a lightsaber in the same medium. Which still doesn't answer the question of wether the lightsaber created by the OP is actually a virtual thing or the expression of an idea in a virtual medium.

But, that doesn't quite make sense. Harry Potter for example is copyrighted, but that doesn't mean no-one else can write stories about a school for wizards that is held in a castle. In fact if it did, JK Rowling would never have been able to write Harry Potter at all, because Ursula LeGuin would hold the copyright on the concept, having written "A Wizard of Earthsea" in 1968.

If someone made an absolutely exact copy of an artistic item then I could see an argument for IP violation there. But if it's just something with the same functionality then, unfortunately, it's expected that this isn't protected. Can I sue Mystical Cookie because she included a teleport history in her MystiTool, which came out after my BijoRewind? No, just like Adobe can't sue Jasc for making Paint Shop Pro when they already made Photoshop. I just upgraded the BijoRewind with a new and more sophisticated user interface which, incidentally, is complex enough that including it in a multi gadget would be difficult. Maybe not impossible, but difficult, and that's achieved at least some protection. And it's good in a sense, because if that was the case, then when I wanted to make a new gadget I would have to spend hours flying around every shop on SL making sure no-one else had made the same thing already.

Likewise if it's a copy of an item from RL, then by copying it from RL they've already broken any IP rights that were embodied in its design, so complaining if someone else does so is unreasonable.

And patenting items in Second Life is arguably pointless, because there's a "patent squasher" clause in the TOS, which basically that if you upload anything patented into SL, you have to license everyone on SL to use your patent.

And yes, there are negative sides to this. Yes, there is a major fear among many creators that this will lead to the market on eventually Second Life bottoming out completely, with the prices of all items falling through the floor as effective copies are made which a) are sold cheap because the person making them doesn't care about business but just wants a few L$ to play with, or b) are given away free in SL because the person making them is recieving a US$20,000 metaverse consultancy contract to do so. But the truth is that eventually, all major markets in SL will have "winners" that will prevent others from being able to make money creating objects of that type simply by being better and more well-known than them.



IP rights protect the expression, not the idea. If it was a carbon copy of an artistic object then yes, I could see the argument. But for many things I couldn't. If it is a photo studio for example then, well, most of them are just posing stands, with white screens behind them, and a posing stand. The white sheets and lighting rings are copied from RL, and posing stands are standard on SL. It's not really clear that "the idea of bringing this into SL" is a separately protectable piece of IP. If it was then, for example, the idea of taking a picture of an RL photo studio, or the idea of taking a video of one, or the idea of making a mock-up one out of Lego for a customer, would all be protectable too - and that would be insane.



Yes, but by that logic, I could complain that the creator is stealing my food because if they hadn't made the item, the idea would still be free for me to do so. In fact any competition at all would have to be outlawed because the losers might starve.

I'm pretty sure the 'few jerks' would have been pummeled into a paste.

I think it is tragic that we make such arguments when in reality the current state of IP is more often an offensive, rather than defensive, tool. Sure, it may seem fair when we can threaten to sue Joe Q. Public into submission. Next week when Uncle Enzo takes your idea, slips a whitewashed patent past a napping government lackey, and you get the cease and desist letter, you might feel differently. Not only are they gonna make your frobber, but they aren't going to let you make it any more.

Some people believe that the only way we can protect our rights is by wielding the law like a bat. I personally embrace a free market where I compete based upon the quality of my work instead of my legal savvy. The idea that these laws actually protect us from the big guy is a farce, the big guy drafted these laws, the big guy spends billions to lobby changes to them as needed, and the big guy certainly didn't draft them to his disadvantage.

It's all a matter of degree. What if in this new, hypothetical story, the protagonist is a boy who doesn't know he's a wizard, and he's living with relatives because an evil wizard killed his parents and tried to kill him? And in the first book, the evil wizard is trying to steal an immortality elixir from a secret room in the school? And the protagonist find out about it, but none of the staff will believe him, so he rounds up two friends to protect the item? How far does it have to go before it becomes an infringement?

The answer is that it doesn't have to be a word-for-word copy, it just has to be similar enough to convince a jury that it's the same story.


You're correct, but these aren't the only two possibilities. It doesn't have to be an exact copy, it just has to copy the unique, artistic design characteristics. So, for example, if the first lightsaber had a unique, ornamental handle made out of sculpties, and the second copied that particular aspect, then that could be an infringement, even if there were differences in other aspects.


This is more subtle than that. It says you have to license everyone to use your patent in your content. It doesn't mean that someone creating their own content is allowed to infringe. But then it goes on to say that you won't sue for patent infringement, without limiting it to your content. I'm not at all sure whether their intent is to limit it to items you create or include any items that might infringe.

Hey OP, what the hell is this item anyway? You'll probably solve the debate with that bit of info...unless you're TRYING to keep the drama going!!

http://www.slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=16804&highlight=

Maybe?

Aleister, could you answer my question on page 3? I really am curious, that wasn't some sort of rhetorical question. I am unfamiliar with the notion of an IP right that isn't a copyright or patent. What does that mean?

That doesn't really matter, Ray-O-Vac can't sue EverReady because thier Nine Volt Batteries Look the same.
As long as there is some material difference in the two products (And the OP freely admits there Is, the original was of signifigantly higher quality, and had more functions) Then No court in the world outside of perhaps Small Claims would Bother with the case Especially since the amounts of money discussed could soar into the Tens of Dollars. The amount the person would waste on Pursuing such litigation would far outweight the expected rewards, and those rewards are Unlikely at Best.

Angel.

Well, this just came up over at Second Citizen:

Stroker Serpentine is taking a knock-off maker of his virtual sex toys to federal court:

Direct link to the story here:

I found this was so ludicrous that I posted it to Digg.com:

I got confused with the english words there. In Germany, the word copyright is used when the creator went through the process of copyrighting his work, as in registering a patent, trademark or whatever. The other... ehm... well, copyright, which is automatically granted when you write a novel, compose a song or whatever, would be called Urheberrecht; which, as I just found out, translates to: copyright. Now I'm quite confused; so far I thought that would be an IP right.

I can't see anything ludicrous there. His products sell for around 12k (the version with 100 animations that everyone will want to buy), and his store is always full of customers. Let's say he sells only 10 of those per day, that's $450 daily. USD, not L$. For a single product. Would you sue if someone stole a product that possibly makes 13k US$ or more each month? I bet you would. At that point, it isn't a game any longer.

There's only one way to design a 9 volt battery. It's an industrial standard; make the thing round or hexagonal, and it won't fit into any electronic devices. There's more than one way to write a book though. If you copy someone else's novel, it won't matter in court if there's a material difference, i.e. if it's printed on different paper. It also won't matter if you wrote the manuscript on your own typewriter.

Wasn't Uncle Enzo the head of a pizza delivery company ran by the Mafia, in Snow Crash? I have no idea what a frobber is though. Anyway, copyright laws are in place to prevent exactly that. If I built the frobber first, I have a copyright. The problem in RL is only to prove when exactly you build or invented something, if you have no patent documents. That's not in issue in SL.

Could it be something to do with this: http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2006/07/index.html

It seems from that dialog, that:
a) Stroker's items are Transfer-ok;
b) in spite of that, he doesn't want people to be able to resell them;
c) he's arguing that legally they can't resell them because their names contain his trademark.

That seems a bit shaky.. it's like saying that I can't sell, for example, an Xbox in its box, because the box has the "Microsoft" trademark on it and I don't have the right to trade as Microsoft. But I don't know the full circumstances and he seemed to think there was a hacked copy involved..

How many ways are there to design a Spoon?
How about a cell phone?
a TV?
DVD player?
Car?
Cooking pot?
Table Fan?
How many different Manufacturers of Blenders are there? They Pretty much all look alike.

There are Millions of products that Look like other products to greater, and lesser degree.
Looks Like has NEVER been a standard for Litigation. Looks So exact as to be Mistaken for the Original, THAT is the standard Unless one is speaking of a completely unique technology, device, or product the like of with has never been created before.
If i make a Watch that looks outwardly EXACTLY like a Rolex, and Engrave the name Bolex there is an Obvious attempt to deceive, But if i make a watch that looks visibly different, and name it Timex, then Rolex has no grounds for litigation.

My battery example demonstrates How close two products can look based upon requirement of function and Still be considered Not in Violation of copyright. Two DVD payers on the other hand may BOTH have exactly the same internal workings, and yet the outer case is different (I worked in Electronics repair and you would be shocked at how often this occurs You pay $500 for a name Brand, and you get the same guts as a person paying $90 at wallmart for a no-name), and that is sufficient for the devices to be considered Not in violation.

Recently, about a Year or two ago, a resteraunt was sued by the Mattel toy Corporation for copyright infringement. The resteraunt, a popular barbeque place was called The Barbie (Australian Colloquialism). The Judge ruled in favor of the resteraunt on several grounds.
A: Mattel was NOT in the resteraunt business.
B: Nothing in the logo, the decore, or the advertising of the resteraunt even hinted at a relationship between the resteraunt and the Doll of the name.
C: there was a chance only So Remote, that someone Might associate the resteraunt with the Doll that it did Not qualify as Infringement.

If the OPs product does Not look close enough to the original to be Mistaken for it, coupled with it having Difference in Function then Sufficient difference exists that Under the law, there is no cause for Action and the person threatening litigation will be wasting their money to even attempt a legal action especially if the OP, and the threatening person are NOT the only makers of the product in Question.

Angel.