CREATe presents the first entry in our series of working papers released in 2021: “A question of (e)Sports: an answer from copyright”. This working paper by Amy Thomas, a PhD candidate and Research and Teaching Associate at CREATe, University of Glasgow, is a pre-print version of an article published in the Journal of Intellectual Law and Property (JIPLP).
In the age of social distancing and self-isolation, eSports (i.e. competitive video gaming) have provided a fitting substitute for stagnating traditional sports events. With the suspension of many live, face-to-face events, eSports, as a born-digital industry, has managed to continue relatively uninterrupted through the pandemic, providing entertainment for new and existing fans alike. Whilst not necessarily a new industry in itself, this new topical interest in eSports provided the impetuous to complete the paper in time to mark 2020.
Whilst this paper was initially conceived as a response to an ongoing debate amongst sports philosophers (are eSports a ‘sport’?*), it has since evolved to a closely-related query as to the nature of eSports from a copyright perspective. Copyright plays an essential role in regulating eSports, being a derivative form of entertainment based on an underlying creative work – a video game.
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