A UK court entered a guilty plea against Ashley Mitchell, an IT guy who hacked into Zynga’s servers last year and stole 400 billion virtual poker chips. His efforts to resell them, which is against Zynga’s terms of service, netted him $86,000 and a yet to be determined jail sentence.…
According to a recent study by OpenDNS, Facebook is both the most widely blocked site in enterprises today and the second most widely allowed site in enterprises today. The study goes on to report that more than 14 percent of all enterprises that block websites on their networks choose to…
Gibson Guitar Corp. recently filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee alleging that Seven45 Studios’ video game “Power Gig: Rise of the SixString,” infringes Gibson’s concert simulation patent. Gibson filed its complaint against 745 LLC (d/b/a Seven45 Studios) asserting “Power Gig” violates its U.S. Patent Number 5,990,405,…
Despite supposedly having millions of users (to Facebook’s 3/4 of a billion), social networking pioneer MySpace appears to be headed out to pasture. Last week, the company laid off 47 percent of its workforce, lopping off 500 employees from its nearly 1,100-person payroll. Rumors that MySpace’s parent company News Corp.…
A new survey by Interactive Age about the best law firms advising on video games and other interactive entertainment named Pillsbury one of the Top 3 firms in the nation. According to the survey, more than 530 attorneys at 30 major law firms now practice in the area of video…
In Amaretto Ranch Breedables v. Ozimals, Inc., Case No. 10-05696, the Northern District of California granted a temporary restraining order enjoining Second Life from honoring Defendant’s take down notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”). Defendant sells “ozimals” which are breadable “living” bunnies that users can purchase and take…
OnLive announced that it was awarded a patent that it alleges is a “fundamental cloud gaming patent.” The patent, USP 7,849,491, is entitled “Apparatus and method for wireless video gaming” was filed in 2002 but just issued in December 2010 after an 8 year battle with the Patent Office. According…
The Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled on the Blizzard v. MDY case, largely affirming the district court’s finding that MDY’s bot (“Glider”) for playing World of Warcraft (WOW) violates the WOW Terms of Use and violates anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA. However, the 9th Circuit found that…
Brightkite has announced that it is rolling out a new business model focusing on group text and abandoning its check-in model. According to the Brightkite blog posting, its new Android application can be your “default text messaging app, handling ALL your messaging from one app, saving you money with free…
Viacom is appealing the decision of the New York Federal Court which granted Google’s (YouTube) motion for summary judgment that it was protected against claims of copyright infringement for videos uploaded to YouTube by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s safe harbor provisions. Viacom believes that Google is not entitled to…