Stealing Settlers? How IP factors into Online Games

Can Intellectual Property Protect Board Games?

I love board games and have been playing a lot of Settlers of Catan online during the pandemic. I use a site called colonist.io, which is an offshoot, unaffiliated version of the Settlers of Catan game. During my Intellectual Property (IP) class with Professor Ho earlier this year, I wondered how IP rights extend to board games. When we tend to think of IP, we might think of cool technological inventions for patents or Disney’s Mickey Mouse for copyright. IP generally relates to protecting human created products, names, and expressions, and can give its owner rights to protect these.

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Slowly But Surely: Closing The Patent Gender Gap

Women’s voices are underrepresented. Recent examples abound in news reporting, Op-Eds, economics, and politics. The patent world is no exception. Women still continue to make up just a small fraction, about 21 percent, of inventors on patent applications, as noted in a recent USPTO Report. However, women have been creating, designing, and innovating for centuries.  So, why is there a gap?

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Alumni Spotlight: William Cassin, JD ‘06

IP Alumni Spotlight: William Cassin
Head of IP for North America at thyssenkrupp North America, Inc.

One day, as you diligently work through engineering design calculations, your manager puts a competitor’s product on your desk and says: “Our competitor’s have product X in the market and we need to make a similar product. Find out if they have a patent on this product, and if so, how can we design around it so we don’t infringe their patent.”  If this scenario sounds familiar, your self-guided exploration of the merger of technology and law may have you contemplating a transition into the exciting world of intellectual property legal practice.  Loyola’s Alumni Spotlight is pleased to share an interview with William Cassin (’06) about his journey to Loyola University Chicago School of Law and beyond.

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Alumni Spotlight: Daniel H. Shulman, JD ’99

Daniel H. Shulman is currently the Chief IP Counsel at Reynolds Group Holdings Ltd. and FRAM Auto Group and is a Loyola University Chicago School of Law alum. Dan has a math and science background from Northwestern University and had the intention of becoming a physicist. But throughout his schooling, including his 4th grade mock trial over Alice in Wonderland, Dan realized he had a knack for arguing and loved it. After reconsidering his interests, Dan decided that going to graduate school for physics was not his career path. Instead, he came to law school with the intention of becoming a patent lawyer. We recently had the opportunity to talk and ask Dan a few questions on his experience during and after law school in the field of IP.

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