During, and further to the COVID Crisis, digital business, and access to digital products and services increased exponentially. In this context, the video games sector, including e-sports, is by far one of the fastest growing sectors, with an immense development potential. This development does not interface easily with Intellectual Property Rules established progressively over the last 150 years for a traditional environment, and raises many questions: could video games be defined as a piece of Art, with all its meanings in terms of copyright? What are the boundaries on copyright protection for video games? What about the image rights of celebrities used in video games? How can the theory of IP exhaustion be applied to the case of video games? How does consumer protection law interact with video games under the current IP framework? Which role for platforms and Internet Service Providers? Should IP Protection be currently further enhanced? For this Session of our Global Digital Encounters, Speakers with a variety of opinions and/or stakeholders’ approaches will provide a worldwide picture of the future of IP and video games, including on re-imagining IP in this area in favor of both business and consumers/society.
Founding Partner at Rizzi & Partners. Visiting Lecturer at Queen Mary University London
Assistant Professor in Law and Autonomous Systems at The University of Nottingham
Senior Regional Counsel – Google
Andrea Rizzi
Dual qualified (Italy; UK) Media & Technology lawyer focusing on interactive entertainment & digital media. Founding Partner at Rizzi & Partners. Visiting Lecturer at Queen Mary University London. Prior to returning to Milan and to private practice in 2017, Andrea spent almost a decade working as in-house legal counsel for two major publishers (Activision Blizzard and Take Two Interactive), based in London. Currently, he specialises in assisting international videogame organizations, ranging from digital content providers, to console/OTT platforms making content available to European consumers, and distributors of software and hardware products, in connection with IP-IT, regulatory and general commercial matters.
Alina Trapova
Assistant Professor in Law and Autonomous Systems at The University of Nottingham. She completed her LLB at The University of Sheffield and obtained an LLM in Intellectual Property Law (with Distinction) from Queen Mary University of London. Afterwards, she obtained her PhD from Bocconi University (Milan). Before joining academia, Alina has worked at the European Union Intellectual Property Office in Alicante (Spain) as part of the Pan-European Seal Programme, where she acted as a Legal Assistant to the President of the Boards of Appeal, drafted appeal decisions on trade mark and design matters and assisted litigators of the Office when defending cases before the CJEU. Alina then spent some time in private practice, after which she moved to academia. She holds a PhD in Legal Studies (International and European Law) from Bocconi University in Milan (Italy), for which she was granted a full merit-based scholarship. Alina’s PhD thesis, entitled ‘EU Copyright Law and Machine Learning: A Net of Authorship Claims’, was awarded cum laude at her defence in 2021. For it, Alina spent time at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in Munich. Alina has also collaborated with fashion institutes in Milan (Milano Fashion Institute and Accademia del Lusso). She has also acted as an external expert for the European Union Intellectual Property Office, the European Audiovisual Observatory, as well as the Ukrainian government. Alina is a Junior Editor at the Kluwer Copyright Blog. Alina is part of the University of Nottingham Commercial Law Centre (UNCLC).
Carmelo Fontana
Technology attorney with over 15 years of experience. He joined Google Legal Department in 2011 where, as Senior Regional Counsel, he currently handles the Italian regulatory and commercial practice. Besides its activity at Google, Carmelo Fontana teaches in numerous Law Courses at Bocconi University, with Focus on Technology Business and IP Law.
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