General – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

June 20, 2019

Here Come the Gamers Again

Harry Potter and Minecraft Prepare to Break New Technological–and Legal–Ground

Remember the uproar when Niantic’s Pokemon Go first launched in July 2016? The consternation over large groups of kids roaming the streets while pointing at their phones? The knee-jerk municipal regulations (like the Milwaukee one my firm got struck down on First Amendment grounds)? The clickbait feeding frenzy in the media over anything with “Pokemon” in the headline?

Yeah, that’s about to happen again. Only doubled.

Click here to read the rest of this post on Augmented Legality.

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March 22, 2019

The Future of Augmented Advertising is Now

The Burger Wars Bring the Lanham Act Into a Brave New World

Déjà vu struck me today. A friend tipped me off to a new Burger King ad in Brazil that uses augmented reality to “burn” the ads of rival burger chains (principally McDonald’s). Consumers who follow through are rewarded with a free Whopper.

See why this matters: click here to read the rest of this post on Augmented Legality

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February 15, 2019

Pokemon Go Nuisance Settlement and the Future of Location-Based AR

Once again, Pikachu is leading us into the future of augmented reality.

Since July 2016, the same month in which it first released Pokemon Go, Niantic has been dogged by lawsuits alleging trespass and nuisance. As I’ve previously reported, those cases (including one from my home county) were long ago consolidated into the class action In re Pokemon Go Nuisance Litigation in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, in San Francisco. In the ensuing 2.5 years, various other defendants were dismissed, and we got an eyebrow-raising decision from the judge refusing to rule out the possibility of a “digitally induced trespass” claim.

In November 2018, Niantic first informed the court that the parties had reached a settlement–although settlements in class action cases must be approved by the court. Today, we got our first look at the terms of that agreement, by way of the plaintiff’s motion to approve the settlement.

Read the rest of this post in my Augmented Legality blog

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January 31, 2019

Boyle’n Bulbasaurs! Pokemon Go Augments the Dockets of a Kentucky Courthouse

More proof that augmented reality is destined to affect all of society: according to a local newspaper in central Kentucky, a 21st-century version of the Hatfields and McCoys is playing out within the local Pokemon Go gaming community–and now the law is getting involved.

It all began with a disagreement within the Boyle County, Kentucky gaming community over who would serve as the group’s admin. The feud ran deep enough that the deposed administrator and his cadre split off to form their own posse–but it didn’t stop there.

Apparently, the new group knew that a member of the original group was a convicted sex offender. As payback to their former squad, the separatists “began circulating flyers, posting pictures of his home and other messages online” to warn others that these were unsafe people with whom to hunt digital monsters. The sex offender responded by seeking–and obtaining–a personal protection order from the local court against this harassment.

And still the feud raged on. According to the article, no fewer than six protective order applications have been filed, and two were issued. “Pages upon pages of harassing messages and fighting between the two groups have been entered as evidence in the family court cases. Verbal altercations between the groups while playing the game happened while children were present, according to court record.” (Niantic recently introduced “player v. player” battles in Pokemon Go. Coincidence?)

All of this would be easy to write off as “ridiculous” and “silly”–as
Boyle County Attorney Chris Herron himself put it–except that the County’s reaction to the whole debacle threatens to take the mess to a whole new, and scarier, level.

Rather than merely policing these rowdy gamers, County officials have been demanding that Niantic remove the Pokestops and Gyms from the local public square, where the groups apparently congregate. That reaction–to punish the speech rather than those who abuse it–is exactly the sort of knee-jerk reaction we saw from municipal authorities all over the country in response to Pokemon Go’s 2016 launch, and that I successfully challenged under the First Amendment in the 2017 Candy Lab v. Milwaukee case.

Issues like this are certainly foreseeable. For example, I blogged in 2013 about the dangers of minors and adults mixing to play location-based AR games, and I wrote in 2014 about rival AR gamers fighting over the same real estate. But these are the inevitable consequences of human being playing games with each other, not the fault of any particular game publisher. I nearly broke into fisticuffs myself once after a friend (illegally, I argued) paratrooped his infantry into my capital city 15 hours into a rousing game of Axis & Allies. Whatever came of that altercation, though, would have been on me, not Milton Bradley.

In this situation, let’s hope cooler heads prevail–both on the streets of Boyle County and in the chambers of its elected leadership.

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September 28, 2018

Who wins when AR collides with property laws?

“When does my right to free speech conflict with your right to private property?

Increasingly, augmented reality lies at that intersection – and that’s creating headaches for property owners, gamers and digital developers, not to mention police officers.”

Read the rest of my article here in the Grand Rapids Business Journal

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August 17, 2018

AR Developers: You Leap Too Far, You Leap Alone

Understanding Magic Leap's Creator Agreement

The AR world is justifiably abuzz about finally getting its hands on the Magic Leap One. This long-rumored device may not (yet) create immersive illusions of whales diving through gymnasium floors, but it does appear to be an important step forward in AR smartglasses technology, proving the naysayers wrong. Developers across the world have been clamoring to get their hands on the debut model that just became available August 8.

In your haste to click through all the “I agree” buttons to get to the good stuff, though, be sure not to skip the fine print.

Click here to read the rest of this post on AUGMENTED LEGALITY®

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August 10, 2018

Snapchat’s Speed Filter Opens the Door to Lawsuits

Can you sue an online advertisement forum for allowing users to post sex trafficking ads? How about Yahoo for failing to remove offensive content created under a fake profile? Traditionally, the answer has been no. Under the federal Communications Decency Act (CDA), internet service providers are granted immunity from lawsuits arising out of content posted by third-party users. However, in a recent decision, the Georgia appellate court has started to define the boundary of how far this immunity may extend. [This is an update to this blog’s post on the trial court decision here.]

Click here to read the rest of this guest post by law student Tariq Akeel on AUGMENTED LEGALITY

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May 4, 2018

“AR Assistant” As a Registered Trademark?

Imagine this scenario:

Developer: “Hey world, check out this new AR assistant I designed! You can talk to it and get helpful information from an augmented avatar.”

Lawyer: “Sorry, AR ASSISTANT® is a registered trademark, and you just infringed it.”

Developer: “Well, what else am I supposed to call a virtual assistant that you interact with in augmented reality?”

Lawyer: “There you go again. We also own AUGMENTED REALITY ASSISTANT®. That’ll be $10,000, please.”

Click here to read the rest of this post on AUGMENTED LEGALITY.

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March 16, 2018

REALITY BARKS, BUT FAILS TO BITE

Two recent lawsuit against AR/VR developers fall short

In two separate judicial decisions issued within the past month, plaintiffs suing AR/VR developers failed to get the relief they were looking for. While every case rises and falls based on its own facts, these examples are instructive of the type of litigation that AR/VR companies are actively facing right now, and for which others in the industry should be prepared.

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February 9, 2018

Plain Contractual Language: A Reality That Can’t Be Augmented

Learn the Lessons of Voorhees v. Tolia

Lynn Voorhees presents to the AR Detroit meetup group in September 2013, soon before the events reported in Voorhees v. Tolia

Often, disputes between cutting-edge technology companies raise very common legal issues and are resolved by well-established law. After WNJ’s Emerging Media & Technologies team broke exciting new legal ground for the augmented reality industry in last year’s Candy Lab v. Milwaukee decision, a recent decision by the federal court in New Jersey reminds us that many AR-related lawsuits will end up looking very much like business cases always have.

The New Jersey court’s January 30, 2018 opinion in Voorhees v. Tolia tells a sordid, but far too common, tale of…

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