Law firm Pullsbury has announced it has formed a "multidisciplinary legal team" specifically focused on representing clients involved in the virtual worlds industry. The team is to bring together attorneys versed in potentially tricky legal areas such as IP, regulation,, privacy, tax and other practices, "in response to the greater frequency and complexity of clients' virtual worlds and video game cases."

Attorneys in the team recently worked with Activision Blizzard, in a copyright infringement case asserting its right to control which programs can access World of Warcraft. Other clients of Pillsbury include Areae, which offers the Metaplace virtual worlds platform.

Historically, Pillsbury has worked on the "cutting edge" of techonogy for over 50 years, helping draft the 1952 Patent Act, incorporating Intel in 1968, trademarking the first dot-com site in 1994 and facilitating a then record $2.2 billion public offering for Network Solutions in 2000. The firm sees this new legal team as the next step forward in this strategy due to the growth of the virtual world industry.

"While marketers and technologists are eager to tap virtual worlds' branding and revenue potential, executives and in-house counsel need to approach these new media applications with knowledge of the regulatory framework and consider risk management issues," ," said James G. Gatto, the head of Pillsbury's Intellectual Property practice, "This requires determining the scope of liability, writing effective terms of use agreements establishing users' permissions and limitations, implementing policies aimed at keeping mature content from minors, if necessary, and ensuring that software and systems powering their virtual presence does not misappropriate others' technology and patents."