The European Court of Justice in Nintendo Co Ltd and others
v PC Box Srl, Case C-355/12 considered the intellectual
property protections available to video games, and came to the
conclusion that video games are a hybrid product made of a complex
combination of technical and artistic elements.
While most are familiar with the intellectual property rights
surrounding the latter element (think dance moves and tattoos),
little attention is given to the vast range of software assembled
together to produce the executable 'game code'.
From engines to hair/fur or leaf-generating middleware to
integrated services via APIs, each and every component is
distributed with licences that are, at the very core, permissions
from the software vendor as to what, how, where and when that
particular piece of software is to be used. These are set out in
terms that are colloquially referred to as End-User Licence
Agreements/EULA (Yoo-Lahs), or T&Cs
(Tees-and-Sees). Neither sounds menacing
