Given the incredibly negative reaction that many video gamers have been giving any video game that uses the rather draconian SecuROM DRM system, you would think that most video game companies would think twice about using it. Yet, apparently, Rockstar has decided to move forward in using it on the PC release of Grand Theft Auto IV. It won't be quite as draconian as Spore in that there won't be a limit on the number of installs, but the whole thing makes very little sense. The DRM won't stop the game from being pirated -- and once a single copy is available, it will be available everywhere. While Rockstar also claims that cracked copies will have some hidden easter eggs that make the game somewhat unplayable, it's quite likely that folks will figure out ways around those changes as well. In other words, it's not actually going to stop any piracy, but it may serve to annoy legitimate purchasers. So why bother?
Against Monopoly points us to a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in a trademark lawsuit that is worth the read, not just for the absurdity of the case, but also for the court's reasoning. The lawsuit involves a strip club in Los Angeles, called The Play Pen, that apparently got pissed off over a strip club found in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. As players of recent GTA's well know, the designers of the game try to make the cities in the game look somewhat realistic (in an extreme manner) compared to the real cities they're supposed to be portraying. They usually change up names just slightly to highlight that it's fictional. Thus, Los Angeles becomes Los Santos and The Play Pen becomes The Pig Pen.
It's already surprising enough that the strip club owners would be upset by this. After all, I would think that being known as the strip club found in GTA might actually drive more business to the club. However, the court reasonably found no trademark infringement and no "unfair competition" as the strip club owners' charged. Beyond the fact that the strip club in the game looks pretty different from the one in real life, the court found the likelihood of confusion to be quite limited:
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.
Undeterred, ESS also argues that, because players are
free to ignore the storyline and spend as much time as they
want at the Pig Pen, the Pig Pen can be considered a significant
part of the Game, leading to confusion. But fans can
spend all nine innings of a baseball game at the hot dog stand;
that hardly makes Dodger Stadium a butcher's shop. In other
words, the chance to attend a virtual strip club is unambiguously
not the main selling point of the Game.
That butcher shop line is a classic. If you want to read the entire lawsuit, you can see it here:
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