This week, PK filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the 9th Circuit, asking it to find that software users don’t immediately become copyright infringers if they violate the company’s (often clickthrough) end user license agreement (“EULA”).
The appeal comes out of a federal court in Arizona, where Blizzard, the makers of the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft (“WoW”), accused Michael Donnelly and his company, MDY LLC, of copyright infringement because he created and sold a program called Glider.
Glider is a “bot,” a program that lets players automate some of the more tedious aspects of playing WoW, such as travelling long distances, or doing repetitive, grinding tasks in order to gain in-game gold or experience points. For a variety of reasons, bots are highly disfavored by Blizzard, which has banned their use in their EULA and their terms of service.
