Stephen S. Wu-- SL: Legal Writer, swu@svlg.com, (408) 573-5737, 50 W. San Fernando St., Ste. 750, San Jose, CA 95113

Teaching Virtual Worlds Law Again

Last summer, I had the privilege of teaching Virtual Worlds Law with Benjamin Duranske at Santa Clara University Law School. I am excited to announce that I am in the process of setting up another summer session with the law school to teach the course again. We have seen a number of developments in the area since last summer, most notably the Eros v. Linden case. And I believe that Ben and I will be honing the course offering to make it even better this year.
Last summer, we covered the following topics, discussing them in the context of both virtual worlds and online games:
  • Governance of virtual worlds and possibly sovereignty of virtual worlds
  • Virtual worlds contracts and contract law
  • Virtual property - is it “property” recognized by the law?
  • Intellectual property issues (primarily copyright and trademark)
  • Unfair competition (unfair and deceptive trade practices, especially in the context of service providers that do not adequately prevent cheating or IP infringement by other users)
  • Abuse and torts in virtual worlds

For a copy of our syllabus from last year, click here.

My question to you, my readers, is whether Ben and I are missing anything. Is there anything you would add to this syllabus? Is there anything you would remove?

Perhaps you are teaching the course yourself. Or perhaps you are interested in the practice area and want to learn more about it. If you tell us about issues of interest to you, I may not only include it in the syllabus but can also add it to this blog as well so that you can benefit from our work, along with the Santa Clara law students.

Please write or call me if you have any suggestions, and thank you for your ideas.

Steve Wu
swu at ckwlaw.com
(650) 917-8045
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