Computer and Video Game Law

Book excerpt: Fun and games have become serious business as evidenced by the rapidly expanding, multi-billion dollar, global computer and video game industry. The relatively new entertainment medium has been growing exponentially and so, too, have its legal difficulties. This new casebook, with its problems and exercises, deals with all aspects of this fascinating phenomenon, including: Product History and Development, Intellectual Property, Commercial Exploitation, and Regulation. The cases guide the reader down a colorful path of disputes involving such familiar hardware names and game titles as: Magnavox, Gameboy, Nintendo, Playstation, Pong, Pacman, Space Invaders, Tetris, Tomb Raider, Frogger, Galaxian, Asteroids, Donkey Kong, Pete Rose Baseball, and Doom. The casebook is suitable as a primary text for both classes and seminars. "What this book is and what this book isn't both matter. Computer and Video Game Law is not a collection of regurgitation in which authors explain the minutia of a few big cases to people with a cursory interest. It is a compendium of cases, and an excellent compendium at that. It has big cases with big names like Nintendo and Sony battling over trademarks and copyrights. It has small cases such as the one in which a martial artist sued over the use of his image in a bestselling game. I wish this book had existed when I wrote my book on the history of video games. I spent hundreds of dollars doing the research for my chapter on video game trials and acquired not even a third of the case material contained in this book." -- Steven L. Kent, Game Historian, Author of The Ultimate History of Video Games