HHR New Media, Entertainment and Technology Group

In the wake of the recently publicized data breach involving Sony’s PlayStation and Online Entertainment networks, Congress appears ready to accelerate its efforts to enact legislation to implement regulations intended to prevent future breaches and provide a framework for enforcement in the event of a breach.  The data breaches at Sony, which occurred on two separate occasions (at the end of April and then again at the beginning of May), involved more than 100 million accounts. The data that was leaked included information about PlayStation subscribers such as names, addresses, emails, passwords, usernames, birthdays, phone numbers and purchase histories.   Continue Reading »

The next interactive gaming revolution will soon be ushered in by a wave of gesture detection control systems, where the player’s body controls the action.  Beginning this year, game developers and publishers will have the technology to develop a viable motion capture-based game, one with more potential applications than any gaming console or system released to date.  Using a TV-mounted motion detection camera and a handheld controller, the PlayStation Motion Controller (rumored to be named the “Arc”) will be capable of recognizing and tracking a user’s face and voice as well as body motion.  Similarly, Microsoft’s Project Natal system for the Xbox 360 will use a TV-mounted motion detection camera that will track the movement of every part of the body, and capture, for the first time, a three-dimensional representation of the player on the screen completely sans gaming controllers. Now, as consumers await the release of a slew of motion capture games scheduled for retail this holiday season, publishers and developers alike need to brace themselves for the myriad of potential legal issues concerning the ownership and licensing of the movements replicated and featured in those games. Continue Reading »

In a decision applauded by webcasters and lamented by the recording industry, the Second Circuit ruled last week that individualized radio stations–such as those offered by LAUNCHcast and Pandora–are not “interactive services” under the DMCA, freeing the webcasters from the potentially massive financial burden of having to pay licensing fees to record labels for the transmission of sound recordings as part of their services.  The decision was the first by a federal court of appeals to examine the hotly-debated issue.

The suit, originally filed in 2001 by several labels owned by Sony BMG, including Arista, Bad Boy and Zomba, alleged that LAUNCHcast, a webcasting service run by Yahoo’s Launch Media unit, which enables users to create “stations” that play songs within a particular genre or similar to a particular artist or song, violated provisions of the DMCA that required payment of licensing fees for the use of sound recordings in an “interactive” service.”  Continue Reading »

Probably the most critical set of provisions in a technology development contract is the one that defines the parties’ respective rights to use and exploit the developed technology–and its individual components–outside of the relationship formed by the contract.

At its core, the relationship between the developer and “developee”–the entity who is need of development assistance–has certain natural tensions and the parties’ interests are somewhat in conflict from the outset.  To better understand, let’s look at the hypothetical relationship between a “developee”–who we’ll call ACME, and the developer–who we’ll call JCN Corp. Continue Reading »