Second Life Lawsuit Heads to Federal Court

Conlaw writes "A former plumbing contractor who has made a new career selling virtual cyber sex toys in the virtual world of Second Life, has now brought suit against another player who is allegedly copying and selling a device called the Sex Gen. The plaintiff, whose avatar is known as 'Stroker Serpentine,' is seeking the real name of the copycat entrepreneur. The reporter describing the lawsuit included commentary from a cyber law professor whose university maintains a virtual Supreme Court in the Second Life world."

Re:USA laws don't apply there

[UbuntuDupe]

Actually, SL is pretty good about IP. You can imbue items with "no copy" proprties and stuff like that.

Posting from a Wii btw.

Re:copyright gone awry

[trauma]

I didn't see a specific claim in TFA regarding what exactly is being allegedly infringed, but SexGen is a lot more than animation files. It's a scripted system which combines selecting/applying animations and moving/rotating the avatars involved, all by way of a menu system built within the (rather primitive) GUI tools provided by Second Life.

Now scripted devices which provide similar functions in SL are not in and of themselves particularly novel any more; in fact there is a rather popular open-source implementation of a similar idea, which is available to people with scripting and animating skills, and for which the license allows resale as part of a bundle of one's own animations. And there are several closed/proprietary systems available for purchase too, with or without the animations included.

All this suggests to me that Stroker's issue must be one of infringement of the SexGen name itself, not the functionality of the device overall, and certainly not the raw animations. As stated, one can't expect to maintain rights to animated representations of sexual positions, and there are many many people doing those types of animations, probably many well before Stroker got into the business. And Stroker's animations aren't that great anyway ;)

Re:Its also in the TOS

[GigsVT]

http://secondlife.reuters.com/media/SDOC1202.pdf [reuters.com]

You could read the court filing, instead of guessing.

He's claiming both trademark and copyright infringement. It looks like the emphasis is on the trademark, since that's a more clear cut case.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Secondlife Copyright Lawsuit

[Stroker Serpentine]

The articles that were being sold were digital duplicates. The plaintiff was selling them based on the popularity of our "SexGen" line. This is not a matter of competition, it is a matter of exploit and theft. All the scripts, animations and sounds were identical. We would not have brought this suit to court otherwise.