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This article looks at how large corporations issue cease and desist orders to small companies and individuals in the game industry. The question is whether large corporations can shut down competition simply by threatening action.

Near the end of class on Wednesday, several students expressed their concern over how the seemingly legitimate, voluntary concession of rights required by EULAs has the serious potential to chill innovation: by providing a legal precedent under which contract law may supercede the previously determined precedent of fair use protection for reverse engineering, hardware and software developers may be deprived of this extremely useful (and, as was pointed out in a previous post, historically significant) technique. There is, however, a larger issue at stake, one that in part rests upon the outcome of this case - the appearance of legal authority over small, independent development teams gained by corporate software studios in cases such as Davidson & Associates v. Internet Gateway may indirectly discourage the type of grassroots efforts from which many original works spring.

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Read more from this blogger: Information Technology and the Law » Blizzard’s Legal Action May Indirectly Chill Innovation