The law firm PCS Avocat participated in a seminar at the Gaming Campus in Paris, dedicated to students in computer science and video game development, focusing on intellectual property law.
Committed to training industry professionals and raising their awareness of key issues in the video game sector, the students were able to analyze, through practical examples, the rights and limitations granted in copyright law, which can hinder or concern those involved in the video game industry.
Find all our training courses for industry professionals and related news.
Once again, we congratulate all the students for their dedication to the projects they supported during this week of training and for the quality of their choice of topics.
Fangames & Modds: Video games by fans
In line with the broader legal issues surrounding player-created games and modding, the intellectual property rights of fan games are particularly relevant. As a composite work under intellectual property law, the use of fan games is necessarily contingent upon the authorization of the video game’s copyright holder.
However, provided they can demonstrate the creation of original elements in terms of gameplay, script, and graphics, creators may be able to benefit from copyright protection only for elements external to the original game.
As part of the game development process itself, publishers are increasingly regulating the use and exploitation of mods and fan games.
League of Legends: a difficult intellectual property protection
As the first video game license dedicated to esports, League of Legends has faced, and continues to face, challenging legal protection under intellectual property law.
Originating from a custom map within Warcraft 3, the creation of the “Dota” mod and its variations—League of Legend, Dota 2, Wildrift, Heroes of the Storm, etc.—is the subject of ongoing legal battles against new studios developing similar, if not identical, games, particularly on mobile platforms.
Car brands in video games
For many years, automotive groups have recognized the potential of video games for promoting and advertising their cars. As a result, many driving simulation games and other forms of gameplay using vehicles incorporate car models and brands from renowned manufacturers – Ferrari, Porsche, Humvee, Jeep, etc.
Legal issues related to the licensing and use of these car brands and models frequently lead to various lawsuits aimed at protecting manufacturers’ intellectual property within the video game world.
On April 8, 2024, the French Court of Cassation, for example, refused to recognize the infringement of the 360 Modena and F40 models from the Italian manufacturer Ferrari in the video game Grand Theft Auto IV.
In March 2020, after more than three years of legal proceedings, Activision Blizzard and its Call of Duty franchise were granted the right to include the Humvee brand, owned by AM General, in its games, based on the right to freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment. The inclusion of the Humvee in the game was deemed not to mislead the public about the origin, quality, or brand of the vehicles.
Finally, the long exclusivity contract between EA Games and the manufacturer Porsche, which ended in 2016, offered all video game studios the possibility of being able, subject to granted licenses, to integrate models from the German manufacturer into their video games.
One Piece: A prestigious license
The creation of derivative works inspired by the One Piece franchise raises numerous questions regarding their legality. Beyond the shared intellectual property rights between Eiichiro Oda, Shueisha, and the manga publisher Vega (acquired by the Kadokawa Group), certain forms of exploitation, particularly fan art, cosplay, and 3D modeling, could be legally permitted under a variety of criteria, based on exceptions to intellectual property law.
Private copies, the degree of inspiration and transformation of scanned works, legal interpretations and case law in different states, and the tolerance of publishers are all factors that can influence the exploitation of products created from the world of the famous pirate.
Palworld: a legal Pokemon knock-off?
A revelation in the video game world in recent weeks, Pale World has enjoyed phenomenal success upon its release, with several million installations in just a few days. This success is linked to a major legal issue affecting the game: its graphical and even mechanical similarities to the famous Pokémon franchise.
The striking resemblances in both the game mechanics and the creatures featured raise serious doubts about the game’s legality, both in terms of intellectual property and unfair competition.
The use of artificial intelligence tools for the design of the creatures, potentially based on images of Nintendo’s creations, exacerbates the risk of copyright infringement.
The coming weeks will reveal Nintendo’s strategic choices regarding whether to sue the publisher Pocket Pair Inc. for plagiarism, and to identify the legal arguments supporting its claims.
Tom Clancy’s: Ubisoft & its partners
A flagship franchise from Ubisoft and based on the literary works of the eponymous novelist, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, and The Division represent a significant body of work in the video game industry and its esports counterpart.
The structuring and evolution of the rights associated with the exploitation of this franchise, both in terms of video game creation and the licensing of related merchandise, proved to be a very interesting topic for students in computer science programs.
Unity, a controversial game engine leader
The first 3D engine used for video game creation, owned by the eponymous studio, announced a new pricing policy in early 2024 involving an additional cost for its developers, now tied not to game sales but to installation (Plus & Personal editions).
As software, Unity remains the intellectual property of the company that develops it and makes it available to professionals under license. The choice of access and usage conditions, and consequently its pricing, remains entirely at Unity’s discretion, much to the dismay of its partner studios.
The future, however, looks set to be marked by very strong competition from products like Godo and Unreal Engine, challenging Unity’s historical monopoly in the video game engine market.
ROMs & Emulators: “Composite Works”
The market for emulators and ROMs of old video games, supposedly “abandoned” by their publishers or rights holders, and whose marketing is now obsolete, is nevertheless experiencing growing interest among the gaming public.
Emulators constitute a form of reverse engineering of a console’s software and its BIOS. Legally, this act constitutes copyright infringement, as reaffirmed by the French Supreme Court’s (Cour de cassation) protected status (March 7, 1986).
Subject to the rules of the Intellectual Property Code, and even if the studios and rights holders of the games were to abandon their exploitation, the video games and consoles in question cannot legally be offered for sale until the acquired rights expire, seventy years after the author’s death.
Recently, Nintendo won a lawsuit against the hosting provider Dstorage and its website 1fichier.com for failing to remove or block access to illegal copies of Nintendo games hosted on its platform, despite Nintendo’s formal notices to do so.
