Patent Law

Ba-Da-Bing! Virtual Strip Club Protected by First Amendment

By Les Weinstein, Michael Young, John Leo Wagner, Eric van Ginkel, and Victoria Pynchon

From our own Hon. Margaret Morrow (head of the U.S. District Court's Settlement Officer Panel here) a reasoned and lively opinion on the intersection between life and video games here - E.S.S. ENTERTAINMENT 2000, INC. v.   ROCK STAR VIDEOS, INC.

The San Andreas Game is not complementary to the Play Pen; video games and strip clubs do not go together like a horse and carriage or, perish the thought, love and marriage.

Nothing indicates that the buying public would reasonably have believed that ESS produced the video game or, for that matter, that Rockstar operated a strip club. A player can enter the virtual strip club in Los Santos, but ESS has provided no evidence that the setting is anything but generic.

It also seems far-fetched that someone playing San Andreas would think ESS had provided whatever expertise, support, or unique strip-club knowledge it possesses to the production of the game.

After all, the Game does not revolve around running or patronizing a strip club. Whatever one can do at the Pig Pen seems quite incidental to the overall story of the Game.

A reasonable consumer would not think a company that owns one strip club in East Los Angeles, which is not well known to the public at large, also produces a technologically sophisticated video game like San Andreas.

Full post as published by IP ADR Blog on November 06, 2008 (boomark / email).