Are facebook poker chips intellectual property?
Notoriously sue happy social gaming company Zynga last week filed a lawsuit in United States District of California court this past week, one of a long line of copyright disputes brought by the company against online sellers of facebook poker chips in their popular online game Zynga Texas Holdem Poker.
The Complaint alleges copyright and trademark infringement, state unfair competition claims and intentional interference with contractual relations. Lots of interesting statements about “virtual property” and “virtual currency,” but at this point, the majority of this Complaint alleges standard copyright & trademark infringement.
Third party virtual items sales have long been a gray area when it comes to the legal precedents governing the copyrights and intellectual property appliations of in game items, mostly because there simply aren’t many precedents to govern virtual items. It would seem facebook poker chips in online texas holdem poker games are now falling into this category.
Gaming company Blizzard’s famous legal battles with in game World of Warcraft gold sellers has been ongoing for many years, though they have mainly focused on creators of game playing bots, chat spammers, and distributers of programs that give players an unfair edge. Oddly enough Blizzard has stayed away from actually going after individual sellers of Wow Gold. Zyng’a claim against PlayerAuctions.com isn’t just over facebook poker chips (or zynga poker chips as they’re known) either, as they also provide Mafia Wars based items/services on their website.
