Copyright, DMCA. My partner Joe Laferrera has written a Client Advisory discussing the 8th Circuit’s decision in Blizzard Entertainment v. Jung, where the court held that the defendant’s efforts to reverse engineer Blizzard’s Internet gaming network in order to provide a competing, alternative network had (a) violated Blizzard’s shrink-wrap agreement, which prohibited reverse engineering, and (b) violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
This is an important case in the rapidly developing jurisprudence of the DMCA. As well, it demonstrates once again the courts’ apparent willingness to enforce shrink-wrap licenses, and to permit copyright owners to use those licenses to override rights otherwise permitted by the Copyright Act.
- Read the case here.
- Read the Advisory here.
I am a founding partner at the Boston law firm of Gesmer Updegrove LLP. This blog focuses on my practice areas: IP, business and antitrust law, as well as any other topic (legal or otherwise) that strikes my fancy. I've also tried to make the blog (and my scribd.com page, below), a resource on practice in the Massachusetts state and federal courts.