Video games, the metaverse and diversity

Intellectual Property, video games, metaverse, diversity, Tencent, Peduti

Recentley Jia Wang, a veteran leader in data science and engineering within the interactive entertainment industry, shared her views with WIPO Magazine on the future of the video games industry and the role that intellectual property (IP) plays in it.

 

Tencent is a global technology firm that operates the world’s leading video game development, publishing and operations platform, and Jia Wang is the Deputy Director of the Technology Service Center for the North Americas Team.

 

Jia Wang clarifies that Tencent is strongly committed to IP and recognizes its enabling role in generating a more vibrant, creative, and innovative ecosystem for games and other areas of their business. A game is both a creative and a technical product and IP protects both aspects. There’s a lot of IP involved in the games that Tencent develops, from the technical mechanisms that enable and enrich the user’s experience to the storyline and the heroes they create.

 

Video games, the metaverse and diversity

 

Regarding to the mertaverse, Jia Wang explains that it’s not yet clear what it is or how it will evolve, although there’s a huge buzz around it. Tencent sees the metaverse as part of “hyper-digital reality”, a concept that integrates the digital world with reality to create a blended experience, which will allow people to connect more deeply with the virtual world. It will simply spark people’s imagination and push the boundaries of possibility.

 

Finally, talking about diversity, Jia Wang highlights that women in all sectors face many challenges, and that in the games industry they are definitely in the minority, but that’s changing. At Tencent America, for example, there is commitment to diversity and inclusion, many women are in leadership positions and there’s a strong sense that women can be successful there. The games industry requires many different skill sets, and that creates a lot of opportunity for everyone.

 

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Author: Nathália Regina Alves Dourado, Bachelor of Laws, at Peduti Advogados.

Source: Tencent, video games, the metaverse and diversity: an insider’s view 

 

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“If you want to learn more about this topic, contact the author or the managing partner, Dr. Cesar Peduti Filho.”

“Se quiser saber mais sobre este tema, contate o autor ou o Dr. Cesar Peduti Filho.”

 

Copyright On Music

COPYRIGHT OVER MUSIC

Atualizado no dia 20 de Março de 2023.

Many artists such as Justin Timberlake, Bob Dylan, Justin Bieber and Imagine Dragons, at the end of 2021 rushed to sell their rights to their royalties [1]. While many feared the Biden administration’s heavy tax hike proposals at the time, others sold their assets for estate planning purposes. Whichever the reason, the topic at hand proves to be an effective case study for us to dive deeper into the type of intellectual property that protects the work from those artists, the Copyright.

 

This article serves as a basic guide on the subject. For starters, the U.S. and Brazilian law are very much like one another, adopting an international groundwork over its concept as well as type of protection. 

 

According to the U.S. Copyright Office, “copyright is a type of intellectual property that protects original works of authorship as soon as an author fixes the work in a tangible form of expression” [3].

 

This means that any kind of independently created expression from a human author with a minimal degree of creativity can be protected by the law, it only needs to be fixed, in other words, it only must be captured “in a sufficiently permanent medium such the work can be perceived, reproduced, or communicated for more than a short time” [3].

 

COPYRIGHT OVER MUSIC

 

This means that any kind of independently created expression from a human author with a minimal degree of creativity can be protected by the law, it only needs to be fixed, in other words, it only must be captured “in a sufficiently permanent medium such the work can be perceived, reproduced, or communicated for more than a short time” [3].

 

Concerning the copyright on music, Brazilian law distinguishes four main types of work that can be protected [4]: (i) the music arrangements; (ii) compositions; (iii) lyrics; and (iv) music partitures. In both countries, however, the length of copyright protection is equal to the term of life of the author plus seventy years after the author’s death. 

 

In addition, anyone can be a copyright owner. Copyright law allows ownership by companies, organizations, and other people besides the work’s creator. And with ownership of said properties, owners are entitled to compensation from the profits made from such assets in the form of licensing revenue.

 

So, when a musician makes a song, and that song is partially or completely owned by the artist, that same song can generate royalties from streaming, cd sales, movie contracts and more. These same copyright ownerships are not only capable of generating revenue, but can be bought, sold, and dealt with just as any other physical asset.

 

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Author: Juliana Kaomy Mikado, Junior Associate at Peduti Advogados.

Source: 

[1] Justin Bieber sells his music catalog. Disponível em: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/24/media/justin-bieber-music-catalog-sale/index.html. Acesso em: 25 jan. 2023. 

[2] Biden’s top tax rate on capital gains, dividends would be among highest in developed world. Disponível em: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/21/biden-tax-plan-raises-top-capital-gains-dividend-tax-rate-to-among-highest-in-world.html. Acesso em: 25 jan. 2023.

[3] What is copyright. Disponível em: https://www.copyright.gov/what-is-copyright/#:~:text=U.S.%20copyright%20law%20provides%20copyright,rental%2C%20lease%2C%20or%20lending. Acesso em: 25 jan. 2023.

[4] REGISTRO E CADASTRO DE MÚSICAS. TUDO O QUE VOCÊ PRECISA SABER! Disponível em: https://www.abramus.org.br/noticias/14245/tudo-registro-cadastro-musical/#:~:text=Podem%20ser%20registrados%20arranjos%20musicais,para%20os%20seus%20sucessores%2Fherdeiros. Acesso em: 25 jan. 2023

 

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“If you want to learn more about this topic, contact the author or the managing partner, Dr. Cesar Peduti Filho.”

“Se quiser saber mais sobre este tema, contate o autor ou o Dr. Cesar Peduti Filho.”

Public transportation system in the city of São Paulo suffers a hacker attack which exposes personal data of its users

The SPTrans’s system, responsible for public transportation in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, was invaded by hackers. The knowledge of this security incident took place on December 15th of 2022, and the communication to its data subjects was made from December 23rd of the same year.

 

13 million of users had the following personal data exposed, from the April 2020 data base: name, social name, date of birth, CPF number, RG number, address, telephone number, filiation, PIS number, student registration number, marital status, place of birth, gender, e-mail, as well as login and password for the service portal on the internet.

 

 

Faced with situations like this, the Brazilian General Personal Data Protection Law – Law No. 13.709/2018 (“LGPD”) provides that the controller (responsible for the decisions referring to the personal data processing) must notify the Brazilian National Data Protection Authority (“ANPD”) and the data subjects about the occurrence of an incident that may entail risk or relevant damage to the data subjects (article 48, LGPD), which was fulfilled by SPTrans, that communicated the ANPD, the data subjects affected and the Police, to investigate the attack.

 

As a recommendation, SPTrans asked its users to change the password used to access the service portal on the internet.

 

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Author: Caroline Muniz, Associate Lawyer at Peduti Advogados.

Source: Hacker invade sistema da SPTrans e 13 milhões de usuários do Bilhete Único têm dados expostos

 

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“If you want to learn more about this topic, contact the author or the managing partner, Dr. Cesar Peduti Filho.”

“Se quiser saber mais sobre este tema, contate o autor ou o Dr. Cesar Peduti Filho.”