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Yesterday, a report surfaced that after Apple lost a lawsuit over the term "iPad" in China, the tablet was getting pulled from the country's shops. More »
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It started out as any other fall afternoon. High school student "Joseph" was in his room playing video games when he got a call from Amanda Johnson, 17, to come over to her house. More »
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"Violent video games," a governmental classification of speech and expression that the Supreme Court found a smidge troubling last June, would be taxed extra under a proposed law in Oklahoma, with the collected money going toward state programs fighting bullying and child obesity. Here we go again. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5881448&view=rss&microfeed=true Though they raised the ire of anti-SOPA/PIPA activists for their one-time support of the controversial anti-piracy bills, the ESA fought to numerous legal battles in the California court system against legislation that criminalized the sale of M-rated video games. That fight made its way to the United States Supreme Court and the state of California lost. Now they've paid the ESA's legal fees to the tune of a $1, 327,000. Considering the Golden State's budget woes, that's a lot of cash to shell out. More »
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Mr. N fell in love with Namco's space shooter Xevious. On his job application, Mr. N wrote that from the moment he played Xevious as a junior high school student, he knew he wanted to make games. And he knew Namco was the company for him. More »
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Of all ironies, it's Electronic Arts now asking a judge to rule that some video game depictions of real-life names and symbols and products don't need a license. More »
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Shoplifting is a crime. Just ask Winona Ryder. Yet, people still do it. They shouldn't, but they do. More »
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You know how Witcher 2 developer CD Projekt were using German courts to go after alleged pirates of the game? And how they gave up when everyone told them how shitty the practice they were using was? Turns out CD Projekt are just the tip of the iceberg. More »
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As reported last week, the legal battle between Bethesda and Interplay over the final fate of a massively multiplayer online Fallout game has ended in a settlement, one that leaves full control of Fallout intellectual properties in the hands of Bethesda. More »
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Electronic Arts is asking a federal judge to rule that it has a First Amendment right to depict real-life military helicopters in video games such as Battlefield 3 without the permission of the aircraft's maker. More »
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Electronic Arts has lost its bid to win the domain "ssx.com" from a holdings firm that bought it up in October. While the holdings firm parked the domain and briefly served ads leading to the game—an action that EA used as the basis for its complaint-an arbitration panel didn't see that as enough evidence of bad faith to justify turning over the domain. More »
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Vector Tanks was around for at least three years on the iTunes App Store and looked a lot like Battlezone the whole time. It isn't there anymore. Atari recently sent legal papers over to the game's developer, Black Powder Media, which now warns other indie developers that "anything that has even a passing resemblance to an Atari classic," can expect to see a copyright infringement claim. More »
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Much has been made of a recent ruling adverse to Silicon Knights in its long-running lawsuit with Epic Games, the Gears of War maker whose Unreal Engine was to have been the guts of 2008 flop Too Human. Basically, a judge tossed out an expert witness for Silicon Knights; he was going to give his estimates of the losses Silicon Knights suffered when its deal with Epic went in the crapper. More »
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To pass the time, hacker Brandon Wilson - who normally messes around with graphics calculators - decided a few months back he'd take a look under the hood of Activision's Skylanders action figures, see what makes them tick. More »
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Twenty-one year-old Christopher Moore swung by his local Game Stop in Norfolk, Virginia. He paid cash for an Xbox 360. The store manager, however, thought something was odd about the hundred dollar bills. They looked funny. More »
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In 2009, then 36-year-old Konami Digital Entertainment employee Yoko Sekiguchi sued her company after being demoted following maternity leave. More »
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Sony, along with several other big companies, has recently tried to institute a "no sue" clause in the terms of service agreements for its consoles. More »
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Earlier this year, Patrice Desilets left Ubisoft Montreal, where he had developed three editions of Assassin's Creed, and moved to THQ's operations in the same city. Ubisoft didn't take that lying down, filing suit against THQ for poaching its top talent and winning a court's decision enjoining it from doing so further. More »
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The gist of many big company's new "No Sue" clauses are that you can't sue them, but beyond that, aarrggghh, there's so much legal wish-wash it makes your head spin. More »
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Earlier this year Polish developer CD Projekt Red got into a legal scuffle with Namco Bandai over the distribution rights to the Xbox 360 port of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. Now a French court has made it quite clear: THQ is out, and Namco Bandai is in. More »
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It's one of 2011's more troubling, if less sexy developments: that of major publishers and platform holders finding ways to stop customers taking them to court if something goes wrong with their product or service. More »
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It's totally cool to "jailbreak" an iPhone to get around its DRM. Apple may not like that, but the courts say otherwise, so it has to abide. Video game consoles? Less cool. But that could soon change. More »
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Reggie Fils-Aime, everybody's favorite pizza man turned game exec, is a terror on the road. The Nintendo of America president thinks it's okay to drive like Mario Kart in real life. You know, burning rubber and throwing heat-seeking turtle shells. More »
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Multinational retailer GameStop is facing a lawsuit from its own employees over security checks the company performs on them whenever they go for a break or clock off for the day. More »
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Texas court-at-law judge William Adams was filmed (warning: graphic violence) beating his disabled daughter Hillary. The video appeared on YouTube, and the unsympathetic judge has admitted it was real—noting that it's "not as bad as it looks on tape". More »
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On Wednesday Ubisoft said Rocksmith, the rhythm game playable with a real guitar, would be delayed in Europe until 2012 because of "music licensing" and "other factors." Yeah, you could say that. More »
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Remember that scene in Mission Impossible when Tom Cruise lowers himself down through a laser maze? Minus the lasers and the wire acerbatics, an unemployed 21-year-old named Yuuki Saitou tried a stealth entry of his own to swipe used games and consoles. More »
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As multiple lawsuits have been brought in multiple venues by multiple former college athletes—some of whom are actually more recognizable as professional stars—I've tried to pull back to the big picture of what really faces video gamers and (principally) EA Sports in the parade of litigation over unauthorized use of likenesses in sports video games. More »
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Another hall-of-fame sports star—Bill Russell, the Boston Celtics great—has sued Electronic Arts over what he calls the unauthorized use of his likeness from his college career more than 50 years ago. More »
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With a supreme court decision earlier this year making it legal for companies to include do-not-sue clauses in their user agreements, the only recourse for customers of companies like Sony and Electronic Arts is to opt-out of the clause via written letter. Now there's a website that does it for them. More »
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An employee of the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department used a city credit card to purchase a little recreation for himself—namely, an Xbox 360. More »
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EA, the video games publisher, is taking EA, the fitness supplies company, to court. And it's not over the name. More »
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The U.S. Supreme Court today declined to rule on a request by the video game industry for $1.4 million in attorneys' fees tied to the landmark video game freedom of speech decision earlier this year, opting instead to kick the request down to the circuit courts. More »
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During a round of Call of Duty: Black Ops, 46-year-old Mark Bradford (pictured) was snuffed out during an online match by a 13-year-old player. Instead of respawning and trying to avenge himself in-game, Bradford went to the boy's house and choked him. More »
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Another batch of documents in the legal wrangling between gaming giant Bethesda and indie darling Mojang hit Twitter today. More »
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Homeland Security officers detailed pro-gaming web broadcaster Victor "Spooky" Fontanez and seized his equipment Monday as he reentered the country following a fighting game championship in Toronto, Canada. More »
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While Sony's new "don't sue us" terms of service are terrible, let's not focus just on Sony. Other companies are now free to do the same thing. More »
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Video games regulators in South Korea say MMO publishers there have obstructed an investigation into "jackpot items," predicated on the idea that players risking in-game currency for random-item payoffs is in fact a form of gambling. More »
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In Oregon, when I trade my games in, I'm required to certify there is no lien against them, like the IRS wants my copy of NCAA Football 11. It's one of the many fun-filled ways in which local ordinances regulate the sale of used games. Madison, Wisc., is scheming up another. More »
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Sony's new PS3 terms of service are designed to stop the company being hit with class-action suits, and having to front juries, which care about little things like the right of the consumer over the operations of multi-billion dollar corporations. More »
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