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IP Rights In the Metaverse
The metaverse, an immersive virtual experience building on the Internet and the physical world, has become a prominent force in branding and marketing for companies struggling to keep up in an ever so globalized economy. Fashion brands, and particularly luxury retail houses, are capitalizing on the popularity of virtual world games among younger generations by collaborating with gaming companies like Roblox and Fortnite in producing lines of virtual fashion goods.
Last May, Gucci hosted the Gucci Garden Experience on Roblox allowing users to purchase virtual Gucci items for their personal avatars to wear in the virtual world. Balenciaga also teamed up with Fortnite to create a line of in-game virtual clothing that also corresponded to a real world physical collection. Brands like Nike and Louis Vuitton have also followed the virtual fashionwear trend. For many of these brands, the metaverse presents an opportunity to attract new consumers and market and build beyond the constraints of physical space.
Parallel to this digital expansion has been a surge of intellectual property issues. However, the realm of virtual worlds is no stranger to this occurrence. Second Life, a once popular online role-playing game by Linden Lab, was the subject of a few copyright infringement controversies involving CopyBot, a third-party debugging module that was repurposed by users to copy real world designs and textures, including those protected by real world trademark and copyright law, into its virtual world. Although Linden Lab's Terms of Service expressly prohibited users from using CopyBot to reproduce other user's in-world assets, many users allege that Linden Lab failed to police and enforce infringement. Although seemingly innocuous, this matter was complicated by the fact that Linden Dollars, the currency backing the Second Life digital economy, could be converted into real world money.
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