IPLJ FEATURE: The Gamer’s Realm - Fordham Intellectual Property, Media & Entertainment Law Journal
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IPLJ FEATURE: The Gamer’s Realm

IPLJ FEATURE: The Gamer’s Realm

NCsoft Trying to Prevent the Release of TERA. In response, TERA to Prevent Certain IP Addresses from Accessing Servers.

NCsoft, the publisher of many Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs), has filed a lawsuit against developer Bluehole Studios to prevent the North American release of its upcoming MMO TERA.  The lawsuit alleges trade secret misappropriation and unfair competition.  NCsoft believes that Bluehole Studios is made up of former NCsoft employees who, while creating a game called Lineage 3 for NCsoft, left to start Bluehole and “made off with copious amounts of confidential and proprietary NCsoft information, computer software, hardware and artwork relating to Lineage 3.”  NCsoft is suing to prevent TERA from being released in North America as well as for monetary damages since TERA has already been released in Korea.

Meanwhile, if TERA is released in May as planned [if at all], the games publisher En Masse Entertainment is going to prevent IP addresses from various parts of the world from connecting to TERA’s North American servers.  As Ars Technica reports, “En Masse said it will block IP addresses from Asia, Africa, Russia, and the Middle East from connecting.”  En Masse believes the action is necessary because “the vast majority of Internet traffic [it sees] from [those] regions are from cyber-criminals relating to account theft, gold-farming, and other hacking behavior.”  If these measures are successful, En Masse “hope[s] to extend the regions in which TERA is available in the future.”

Gregg Katz

Gregg Katz is a 3L at Fordham University School of Law. He grew up on Long Island, New York and played a lot a video games and watched a lot of TV. Now he is trying to turn those interests into a career in entertainment law. Gregg is IPLJ's resident video game expert but we promised him we'd keep that secret between us.