Bucerius Law School triumphs in international video game law competition!

Bucerius Law School triumphs in international video game law competition!

The Bucerius Law School congratulated its law student on success at the Games Law Moot 2025, a top -class event that deals with questions of video game law. The team, consisting of Julian Petrat from the 2022 vintage, Paul Haverkamp from the 2020 vintage and the Czech exchange student Antonín Dvořák, fought for second place in his written performance and was the only student team that took part in the digital oral negotiations. A total of 22 teams worldwide took part in this competition, the brief phase of which began in January 2025. The four best teams that qualified for the oral phase at the end of March 2025 consisted primarily of practitioners in the industry.

The Bucerius team is invited to the Conference on Video Game Law in autumn in Vilnius, which underlines the success of the team. The treated case was about copyrights and competitive violations initiated by a former employee of a game developer studio. The special thing about it was that the employee brought the basic idea and a prototype and used AI tools in development. The team was looked after by Jasmin Dolling, supported by the research center for Games law of the Bucerius Law School and by Professor Dr. Linda Kuschel, Masha Stolbovа and Professor Dr. Christian Rauda.

Legal framework in video game law

In the current legal landscape, the importance of copyrights is becoming increasingly obvious to the gaming industry. A recent judgment of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in the case C - 159/23 clarifies the copyright protection of computer programs and has a direct impact on developers and modder. According to this judgment, protection refers exclusively to the forms of expression of a program and not to temporary data stored in the RAM. This means more freedom for developers to make changes, while at the same time the need is emphasized to create a clear delimitation between permissible use and inadmissible revision, such as it media law reports.

The judgment has far -reaching implications for the software industry. It strengthens trust in the legal framework and promotes creative and technological innovations by creating clear limits for copyright protection. Companies are encouraged to formulate their license agreements more precisely in order to minimize legal risks. These developments are in line with Directive 2009/24/EC, which forms the legal framework for the protection of copyright content in the software industry.

copyright protection of video games

Another important aspect of the legal disputes in the area of ​​video games recently showed up in a legal dispute before the Cologne Regional Court, in which two developers argued on the copyright infringement of a game idea. The plaintiff, who developed an "Idle Game" racing game, claimed that her concept was copied. However, the court found that ideas or concepts do not enjoy copyright protection, but are only protectable. This reflects the basic principles that define the limits of the copyright and competition law protection in the field of game development. As Lawyer for Software , the decision of the court also showed that essential changes are necessary to be considered processing or redesign.

The decision states that the attacked game does not represent a violation of copyright because it keeps enough distance from the original work. This again emphasizes the importance of creative individuality in game development, while the court also realizes that basic elements of games are often common and are not considered worthy of protection.

Overall, it can be seen that the area of ​​video game law is dynamically due to success in competitions and pioneering judgments in the case law. The challenges that arise from the balance between intellectual property and the promotion of innovations are of great importance for developers and lawyers.