On January 17th, 2024 the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the “Policy implications of the development of virtual worlds” which aims to set a framework for the rapid evolution of virtual worlds and calls on the Commission to propose guidelines and good practices clarifying the legal obligations and responsibilities of the different stakeholders involved.
Co-rapporteurs Iban Garcia del Blanco and Axel Voss text asserts that the EU’s legal framework for the protection of intellectual and industrial property rights, including copyrights, trademarks, patents, designs, and trade secrets fully applies to virtual worlds, while noting that the development of virtual worlds poses new challenges when it comes to IP enforcement and identification of infringers, and to the issues concerning the conflict-of-law rules on applicable law and jurisdiction.
The JURI committee’s intention is not to address all the points but to highlight certain principles to protect the rights (IP, patents, copyright) and see how to use them in the metaverse.
The Co-rapporteurs based their work on what was already done at EU level, such as the recent European Commission’s Call for Evidence on “An EU initiative on virtual worlds” (May 2023) to which GESAC answered. The secretariat has been in close contact with the rapporteurs and political advisors to ensure that its main priorities were included. The report underlines the applicability of liability rules to cover the uploading of user-generated content but asserts the need for further clarification on how existing rules asserted in the DSA and Copyright Directive should apply and be enforced to online content-sharing services that make content available in virtual worlds.
