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Fighting fakes in a virtual world mentions some of the issues related to SecondLife in the context of [w:copyright] and [w:trademark] as a means of explaining the entry of Field Fisher Waterhouse:

...Firms are clamouring to get involved with more than 100 big brand names having a presence - from Coca-Cola and Microsoft to BMW and the fashion designer Jean-Paul Gautier - as well as thousands of smaller traders.

But when they do get on board, some are finding that their intellectual property (IP) - typically brands and content they own - are already there.

So perhaps it is inevitable that one of Second Life's newest residents is a UK law firm...

I've written about this sort of stuff before, and as exemplified with the ongoing case of Eros LLC vs Volkov Cattaneo, these issues are going to continue coming up. Because of this, I decided to go have a look around and see if I could chat with Solomon Cortes - and fortunately, he was around today so that I could.

Most of our talk was off the record - the question I wanted to answer was how this would affect the average business owner in Second Life - the people who have built the metaverse one prim at a time, whose original designs might be stolen. I make things myself; I have a personal stake in such matters though I lack a corporate office (or incorporation papers, for that matter...) - and most small business owners in Second Life are in much the same boat. How does the entry of Field Fisher Waterhouse into the metaverse help?

The answer is that there really is no single answer; a lot depends on the particular situation. What I was able to surmise is that the presence of Field Fisher Waterhouse (FFW) is a proactive presence instead of a reactionary presence. It isn't about lawsuits as much as it is about protecting the rights of people; that FFW is willing to listen and discuss things with people.

The thrust of this all seems to be a mix of education and an injection of stability in protecting the rights of creators - large and small. And that is, by itself, a very welcome thing to Second Life.