日本におけるゲーム関連の法的問題 - 最近の判例等を中心に -

1 Recently, in the Japanese game market, the mainstream of its format is transferring from package game into online platform mainly for smart phones and tablet devices. Under these circumstances, we can easily find out many court cases on game contents, and furthermore, there have been many news coverages on, for instance, issues of Payment Services Act related to in-game currency and issues of Act against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations related to so called “Comp-Gacha.” 2 There are various kind of recent court cases related to game contents, most of which are those related to copyrights; provided, however, that there are also other kind of cases including those on a) Unfair Competition Prevention Law, b) portrait rights and publicity rights, c) game production service agreements and d) investment agreement for game production. 3 With respect to issues on Payment Services Act related to in-game currency, in case of issuing in-game currency for compensation, the game company issuing it shall be, under certain conditions, obliged to set aside issuance security deposit, which may burden the company with heavy economic strain. 4 With respect to issues on Act against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations related to so called “Comp-Gacha,” many social problems have occurred since users of a game content got many items in order to get a rare item(s) and those situations caused heavy charges to some users. Therefore, Consumer Affairs Agency issued a guideline in which it construed that, under certain circumstances, games including “Comp-Gacha” shall be regarded as breach of prohibition from so called “card combination” under Act against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations, and furthermore, some game trade associations voluntarily made public their operational guidelines. 5 Since growth and advancement of game services is significant in the game industries, new legal issues thereon will arise in the future, under which adequate construing of related laws and regulations shall be requied in accordance with basic concepts on current laws and regulations.