Intellectual Property Pong: Three Matches that Affect your Play Today
2016/Scott Nelson/writing
In Play/Write: Digital Writing, Rhetoric, Games. Eds. Jan Holmevik, Cynthia Haynes, & Douglas Eyeman. Parlor Press, 2016.
I wrote a book chapter on intellectual property law as it applies to video games. It's part of a larger collection of works on video games by various scholars. You should check it out, if you geek out on copyrights and/or patents and/or video games.
In America’s Best Family Showplace Corp. v City of New York, an arcade owner challenged the constitutionality of a New York zoning ordinance. In the ruling, the court cited a Supreme Court case where a coin-operated peep show was found to be protected speech, but went on to say it was “not persuaded” that “video games, unlike the nude dancing . . . are a form of speech protected by the First Amendment” because video games do not communicate an idea (173). It would not be until 2011 in Brown v Entertainment Merchants Assn. that the Supreme Court would uphold First Amendment protections for video games.