Historic legal decisions in gaming

Gamasutra discusses three significant legal situations that have shaped the game industry: IP and copyright law, first amendment protection, and patent trolls. The article introduces the history of these legal areas, sometimes with court decisions that established precedent. While the article is basic — it doesn't claim to cover all significant litigation in the history of games — it explains these situations to readers who would normally be confused by the judicial process.

We'd add other historically significant cases, if turning this into a best-of list. The Tetris/Nintendo/Tengen story helped define the third-party licensing process. Remember MCA Universal vs. Nintendo, where the movie studio thought that Nintendo's Donkey Kong too closely resembled its King? MCA Universal lost for a variety of technical reasons, including a previous court case in which it argued that King Kong was in the public domain. What about the Nintendo antitrust settlement about unfairly locking out competitors?