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Update on Bragg v. Linden Research, Inc.

I've been remiss in covering some of the developments in the Second Life virtual property law suit, Bragg v. Linden Research, Inc., so here's a brief rundown of what's happened since the arbitration clause was invalidated.

No one has covered the developments of the case better than Benjamin Duranske at Virtually Blind. He has very thorough coverage of Bragg's motion to amend, Bragg's motion to dismiss Linden's counterclaims, and details of the court date, which has now been set.

Going back further, The Forge has a nice dissection of Linden Research's initial response brief. What interests me most about this is that Matt takes the time to highlight the contradictions between Linden Research's legal argument and its more informal marketing claims.

For example, Linden argues in its response that "Defendants deny that Second Life allows for the actual 'conveyance of title' in 'virtual land,' as 'virtual land' is not property to which one may take 'title.'" Matt points out, however, that the Linden Research CEO has said on record that "the preservation of users? property rights is a necessary step toward the emergence of genuinely real online worlds" and that "we sold the title, and we made it extremely clear that we were not the owner of the virtual property." This inconsistency, along with several others Matt points out, helps support my argument that Linden Research repeatedly misrepresented its Terms of Service with regards to virtual property ownership.

Of course, this all means that I have a tremendous amount of tweaking to do to my virtual property article before it publishes in December. I'm learning the hard way that articles are never done until they've been printed.

Full post as published by Clever WoT on August 12, 2007 (boomark / email).