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	<title>Los Angeles Litigation BLOG</title>
	<link>http://www.kleinlitigationblog.com</link>
	<description>Litigation attorney helping with business litigation, copyrights, intellectual property, labor law, trade secrets and trademarks.</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:08:36 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>Epic Games CEO Sweeney Predicts Video Games’ Future at DICE</title>
        <pubDate>Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:08:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<description><![CDATA[In addition to this summer’s E3 video game expo, another important video game gathering is the DICE Summit (Design, Innovate, Communicate, and Entertain) that occurs over several days in Las Vegas and draws together video game executives. This year’s DICE Summit took place February 8 – 11 and featured Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney. For his speech at the Summit, Sweeney spoke about where he sees video game development headed in the next 10-20 years. His projections provide a good idea of what companies working in this business need to do to stay competitive. Graphical capabilities are nearing their maximum possibility – Humans cannot notice improvements beyond 72 frames per second, and the most high-tech games today run at 60 frames per second, so we are already fairly close to that limit Graphics may be near their limit, but non-graphical improvements are not – Consider the popularity of...<br /> <a href="http://www.kleinlitigationblog.com/epic-games-ceo-sweeney-predicts-video-games%e2%80%99-future-at-dice/">Read More &#187;</a>]]></description>
		<link>http://www.kleinlitigationblog.com/epic-games-ceo-sweeney-predicts-video-games%e2%80%99-future-at-dice/</link>
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		<title>Vibrating Video Game Controllers Protected by 150 Patents</title>
        <pubDate>Mon, 20 Feb 2012 16:10:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<description><![CDATA[Video game controllers that vibrate enhance the game playing experience – when your player gets tackled in an NFL video game, you feel the hit in your controller; when your car crashes in a spectacular wreck, your controller shakes to indicate the damage. These sorts of video game improvements, particularly those that pertain to hardware advances, are available for patent protection, and the inventors behind these innovations should not hesitate to file for protection. The vibrating controller is a lucrative business for Immersion, which owns 150 patents on its so-called haptic feedback technology. Immersion is a smaller company (relatively speaking, that is, with a market cap of just over $180 million), but that did not prevent the company from prevailing in lawsuits against two video game and technology giants, Microsoft and Sony. In the early 2000s, the two began using vibration technology built in to their controllers. Without verifying whether...<br /> <a href="http://www.kleinlitigationblog.com/vibrating-video-game-controllers-protected-by-150-patents/">Read More &#187;</a>]]></description>
		<link>http://www.kleinlitigationblog.com/vibrating-video-game-controllers-protected-by-150-patents/</link>
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		<title>Facebook IPO Popular, But How Safe is Our Info?</title>
        <pubDate>Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:54:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<description><![CDATA[Harkening back to the dot com days of the late 1990s and early 2000s, the forthcoming Facebook initial public offering (“IPO”) will be one of the more highly anticipated IPOs in the tech and social media world. Facebook’s market cap seems to compound by the day, hovering between $80 and $100 billion, placing it amongst the largest companies in the world. Is the excitement warranted, or should we be more cautious about how the immensely popular company operates? Internet social media companies like Facebook make their money largely through advertising. We are at a point in technology where it has never been easier for companies to know more about our preferences. With a public Facebook profile, for example, companies can learn nearly everything they could want to about a person – location, education, favorite books and movies, recent purchases, location of friends and countless other details that people willingly post....<br /> <a href="http://www.kleinlitigationblog.com/facebook-ipo-popular-but-how-safe-is-our-info/">Read More &#187;</a>]]></description>
		<link>http://www.kleinlitigationblog.com/facebook-ipo-popular-but-how-safe-is-our-info/</link>
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		<title>Game Genie Lesson – Consumers Can Tinker with Games</title>
        <pubDate>Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:55:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<description><![CDATA[The video game “cheat system” known as the Game Genie played an important role in the development of intellectual property law. It became the target of a lawsuit in the early 1990s from Nintendo, with the case receiving a hearing in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal appellate court that covers California. At issue was a software concern we continue to see today – to what extent can consumers modify copyrighted works for their own purposes? The Game Genie was a device that consumers would plug into their home video game consoles; then they would plug their games into the Game Genie (back when consoles used cartridges rather than optical discs). Consumers could then enter codes to get things like unlimited lives or powerful weapons that changed the gameplay. How the Game Genie did these things is what led to the legal dispute with Nintendo. By entering a...<br /> <a href="http://www.kleinlitigationblog.com/game-genie-lesson-%e2%80%93-consumers-can-tinker-with-games/">Read More &#187;</a>]]></description>
		<link>http://www.kleinlitigationblog.com/game-genie-lesson-%e2%80%93-consumers-can-tinker-with-games/</link>
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		<title>Nintendo Used to Own the Cross-Shaped D-Pad</title>
        <pubDate>Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:52:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<description><![CDATA[For those who played video games in the 1980s, you can probably draw Nintendo’s iconic controller from memory. What you may not have known, though, is that for 23 years until 2005, Nintendo had a patent that covered a particular aspect of that controller – the cross-shaped D-pad (short for directional pad). Nintendo first used the shape for its 1982 Donkey Kong handheld game, but then adapted it to its first home console. The patent claim that Nintendo used to protect the D-pad is simple, noting just that it is a switch “formed in the shape of a cross.” Of course, multiple game systems and controllers have come out since then, so how did competitors get around the cross-shaped D-pad patent? They looked to the language of the patent, and then carefully avoided it. For its PlayStation controllers, Sony used a cross-shaped, raised D-pad different from Nintendo’s design. Sony’s featured...<br /> <a href="http://www.kleinlitigationblog.com/nintendo-used-to-own-the-cross-shaped-d-pad/">Read More &#187;</a>]]></description>
		<link>http://www.kleinlitigationblog.com/nintendo-used-to-own-the-cross-shaped-d-pad/</link>
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		<title>Privacy Violations Hurt Goodwill, Open Door to Lawsuits</title>
        <pubDate>Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:24:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<description><![CDATA[Sun Microsystems co-founder and former CEO Scott McNealy once quipped in 1999, “Privacy is dead. Get over it.” He was probably a bit ahead of his time, but his quote has taken on particular relevance these days, as privacy policy problems abound with the explosion of social media and Web 2.0. Google is the latest company to find itself in hot water with the internet community after a change in its privacy policy. A few weeks ago, Google announced that it would be aggregating all its privacy settings into a single account, enabling the company to assemble everything it knows about you in one place to improve its advertising efforts. Competitor Microsoft has already seized on the negative press, running ads in major newspapers pushing computer users to its own products if the Google changes have them concerned about privacy. Of course, Google is not the only technology company with...<br /> <a href="http://www.kleinlitigationblog.com/privacy-violations-hurt-goodwill-open-door-to-lawsuits/">Read More &#187;</a>]]></description>
		<link>http://www.kleinlitigationblog.com/privacy-violations-hurt-goodwill-open-door-to-lawsuits/</link>
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		<title>Was Steve Jobs Behind a High Tech Gentlemen’s Agreement?</title>
        <pubDate>Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:20:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<description><![CDATA[According to e-mails unearthed during a Justice Department investigation, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs may have been at the center of a series of “gentlemen’s agreements” to keep top executives from jumping ship and going to rival technology firms. A federal class-action lawsuit claims that executives from some of California’s most influential tech firms – Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Lucasfilm and Pixar – agreed not to hire each other’s top workers. The companies claim that they did nothing wrong and simply entered into common agreements with each other to collaborate and not take each other’s talent. Executives who would have been recruited argue otherwise. They say that the agreements kept executives from receiving better offers, since the agreements prevented bidding wars between the companies. Competition to hire top employees at tech companies in California is fierce, as our state’s tech workers earn the most in their industry out of...<br /> <a href="http://www.kleinlitigationblog.com/was-steve-jobs-behind-a-high-tech-gentlemens-agreement/">Read More &#187;</a>]]></description>
		<link>http://www.kleinlitigationblog.com/was-steve-jobs-behind-a-high-tech-gentlemens-agreement/</link>
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		<title>Video Games and What Copyright Does and Does Not Protect</title>
        <pubDate>Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:21:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<description><![CDATA[Yesterday we discussed how important it is for video game creators to protect their games by obtaining copyright protection for their works. Copyrights are not all encompassing, however. They protect certain aspects of your video game, but not everything. What parts of a video game does copyright protect? A common saying is that copyright protects “expression.” It protects any part of your video game that involves creative expression, meaning things like audio, graphics, text and video. Copyright also protects the computer code behind the video game, but note that this means the exact code, the way you wrote it. Someone can still do something similar provided it is not a verbatim copy of what you did. Copyright also entitles the holder to create derivatives, which are games, stories or anything else derived from your original work. This grants you the exclusive right to make prequels or sequels to your video...<br /> <a href="http://www.kleinlitigationblog.com/video-games-and-what-copyright-does-and-does-not-protect/">Read More &#187;</a>]]></description>
		<link>http://www.kleinlitigationblog.com/video-games-and-what-copyright-does-and-does-not-protect/</link>
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		<title>Are You a Video Game Creator? Protect Your Works</title>
        <pubDate>Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:23:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<description><![CDATA[While copyright protection immediately brings to mind things like paintings, novels and movies, video games are entitled to the same protection under intellectual property law. Video games often incorporate elements from each of these more traditional fine arts – the games may contain meticulously drawn landscapes and game environments, riveting story lines and live action video. Video game creators, particularly those who work on their own, should take the same precautions as other artists in protecting their property. Copyrights exist the moment you create something, so your work is technically protected as you develop it and when there is a finished product. The work must be in some sort of tangible medium, though, so mere ideas have not yet reached the point where they are entitled to protection. While you may know what you created, unfortunately, you may not be able to prove that work belongs to you in the...<br /> <a href="http://www.kleinlitigationblog.com/are-you-a-video-game-creator-protect-your-works/">Read More &#187;</a>]]></description>
		<link>http://www.kleinlitigationblog.com/are-you-a-video-game-creator-protect-your-works/</link>
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		<title>Digital Delivery – Adapt or Go Bankrupt?</title>
        <pubDate>Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:25:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<description><![CDATA[Is there a way we can protect companies’ copyright interests while not harming consumers? It has been difficult to achieve one aim without harming the other. The Megaupload case demonstrates the tension between the two sides, as the FBI may now face a lawsuit from Megaupload users over its shutdown of the popular website last month. The FBI targeted Megaupload for its millions in revenue that it brought it from offering copyrighted works free on the internet. However, there were also many legitimate uses of Megaupload’s services, and all those who had important files on Megaupload’s servers have no access to their data. The government and entertainment conglomerates have been battling with technology for several decades now – the debates we now see have their roots in the 1984 case that pitted Sony’s VCR technology against University City Studios. Yet here we are, some 28 years later, still wondering whether...<br /> <a href="http://www.kleinlitigationblog.com/digital-delivery-adapt-or-go-bankrupt/">Read More &#187;</a>]]></description>
		<link>http://www.kleinlitigationblog.com/digital-delivery-adapt-or-go-bankrupt/</link>
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