Lawmakers in the United Kingdom seem to be having a change of heart about two key parts of an anti-piracy law. Lawmakers said at the end of last week that they plan to abandon legislative plans to block websites allegedly involved in distributing or sharing copyrighted materials.

Individuals claiming to be a part of the hacktivist group Anonymous have claimed responsibility for a series of cyber attacks on Japanese government websites. The websites for Japan's Finance Ministry, Supreme Court, and the DPJ and LDP political parties were taken down temporarily by attacks. The sites are now back online.

According to a research paper from Boston University, patent trolls costs U.S. companies and other organizations a staggering $29 billion last year. The study analyzed the effect of intellectual property rights claims made by organizations that own and license patents without producing related goods of their own. Some would say that this is the very definition of a patent troll: a company that buys or licenses patents with the express purpose of litigating its way to financial success.

Ofcom, the regulations body in charge of media in the UK, has released details of a proposed plan that forces British ISPs to send warning letters to subscribers accused of copyright infringement by video game, music, film and other media companies. Under these proposed guidelines, individuals who receive three letters in a 12-month period would have their personal data, downloading and filesharing history handed over to the copyright owners to help them prepare for a lawsuit.

U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel is seeking public comment on the administration's future policy related to intellectual property law and the enforcement of it in the future. Espinel is smart to avoid using any language that would likely get her thousands of emails filled with disdain and anger such as SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, etc.

Activision has announced the winners of its Independent Games Competition. Christopher Hui's Iron Dragon won first place in the developer competition, and the $175,000 cash prize. Iron Dragon is an action flight adventure game designed for touch-screen devices. Second place and a $75,000 prize went to Michael Stanton's Planet Smashers, a multiplayer action game built from scratch.

The contest entries were judged by IndieCade. All winners retain the intellectual property rights to their games.

Last week we presented the news that a "First Sale Doctrine" case (Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons) was headed to the Supreme Court. Some journalists were sounding alarm bells that an outcome in favor of the publisher in the case could have a serious impact on how people sell used products such as books, DVD's and even video games.

Last week American author John Beiswenger settled his lawsuit against GameTrailers and dropped his lawsuit against Ubisoft "without prejudice." The lawsuit alleged that Ubisoft knowingly used plot points and story mechanics from his novel LINK in their Assassin’s Creed video games. While Beiswenger ended his legal fight, he left the door open to sue Ubisoft at a later date and his lawyer said that he still asserted the claim that Ubisoft had infringed on his work.

Update: Al Lowe issued the following statement, noting that he will not sure Wisecrack Games and that he did in fact give the company permission to use his name:

Lawyers for Megaupload won a legal victory in court this week against the U.S. Government and pushed ahead with requests to have the case dismissed outright and - barring that - release the seized assets of the company.

If the early votes in the European Parliament related to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) are any indication, the controversial treaty will not survive a final vote later this year. Three key European Union committees have voted against ACTA: the Committee on Legal Affairs (Juri), Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE) and the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE). All three committees expressed "opinions against Acta," according to the BBC.

American author John L. Beiswenger has settled his lawsuit with GameTrailers and has decided to walk away from his lawsuit against Ubisoft "without prejudice." The author filed the lawsuit against Ubisoft and GameTrailers earlier this year claiming that the plotline from the Assassin’s Creed games borrowed liberally from his novel "LINK."

Whatever side of the issue you are on, it is never a good thing when a company that is seen as a major rights holder rails against piracy and file-sharing and then gets called out for ... piracy and file-sharing. Using the site YouHaveDownloaded.com, TorrentFreak has once again caught the employees of a major corporation engaging in the very thing that it publicly rails against and pays millions of dollars to fight.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) continues to run into hurdles in various parts of the world. Today those hurdles include a sharp rebuke from Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and Australia's Green party.

An recent exhibition in Romania called "UpDate 3D Loading" by an artist named Iani Papadopol was a big hit with attendees. Some called his work brilliant and amazing. It turns out that the art on display was amazing, but it just wasn't the product of Papadopol because it was all stolen.

Vostok, the studio formed by many former GSC Gameworld employees tried to secure the rights to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, according to a report at Eurogamer. Ultimately the new studio failed to secure the rights and simply decided that it would be better off moving on to something that fans of that game series might consider playing.

Electronic Arts has responded to reports that a tank from its free-to-play online RTS game, Command & Conquer: Tiberium Alliances, stole a design from Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000. The controversy began when Reddit users noticed a striking similarity between Tiberium Alliances' Grinder and Bombard tanks and Warhammer 40k's Bonecruncha and Baneblade vehicles.

The creators of the music game Def Jam Rapstar are the target of a lawsuit filed by music giant EMI.

Southpeak has had a lower court victory over Timegate Studios overturned on appeal, according to a rather in-depth report on the case over at the Gamer/Law Blog. A Texas District Court Judge has vacated a lower court ruling in which Southpeak was awarded damages of $7.3 million and the intellectual property rights to the Timegate-developed game Section 8 by an arbitrator – including the right to create sequels based on the franchise.

Remember when European Union trade chief Karel De Gucht said that Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) would be referred to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in February? Well it turns out that the infamous treaty will not go to the highest court in Europe after all. According to a report from TorrentFreak, the road to the EJC has been blocked in the European Parliament.

Mojang's ultra popular sandbox action building game, Minecraft has been downloaded 25 million times. Of those downloads, about 5 million were eventually converted to the full registered game, according to a report in The Financial Times. Through game sales and merchandising developer Mojang has managed to rake in $80 million. That's pretty impressive for a privately held company.

Video game console makers Microsoft and Sony are squaring off against enthusiast hackers, academics, and organizations such as the EFF who would like to make the act of jailbreaking legal. There is already an exception in place that allows the iPhone to be jailbroken, so supporters of gaining similar allowances for the Xbox 360 and PS3 are urging the U.S. Copyright Office to make these exceptions. The copyright office is currently accepting public input comments on the subject until Friday, and will likely make a decision soon shortly thereafter.

Internet advocacy group Public Knowledge has launched a new web site called The Internet Blueprint. The goal of this new hub is to develop bills that will strengthen internet laws and ultimately make the internet a better place. The site is the group's response to lawmakers in Washington who asked Public Knowledge for input on how to improve the Internet.

In a lengthy back-and-forth with Eurogamer, FortressCraft creator Adam Sawkins explains why his Xbox Live game is so much more than a clone of Minecraft. With Minecraft officially launching next month on Xbox Live, Sawkins is taking a lot of heat from the press and gamers about his game. Many say that it is simply a cheap knock-off of Minecraft. Sawkins, who worked on the Burnout series before striking out on his own, takes issue with the comparisons to Minecraft.

The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) has published its annual written submission to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative complaining about copyright infringement and file-sharing.

Although it was not inspired by Double Fine's ongoing Kickstarter success in funding an old-school point-and-click adventure game, Gambitous seems to be landing just in time to take advantage of a possible changing trend in funding game development. The company, which hopes to launch in March, is meant to help independent game developers find the revenues they need to fuel new ideas or continue ideas they have already found some level of success in.

By Kevin Dent

I started to play Triple Town as of last weekend; I had a blast and even more so when I see that they were actively supporting it with frequent updates. Then I started to hear some rumblings in the industry about how another game basically ripped it off.

Since then, we have seen Spry Fox issue proceedings against Lolapps. Most of us have read about it and shook our heads; I want to take the rhetoric out of it. I wanted to just look at the basic facts.

In an exclusive interview with GameBeat, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus denied accusations that it copied a rival developer's Facebook Bingo game, but also said that social game developers refine and improve game concepts on the market to create the best products.

Over the weekend Santa Monica, California-based Buffalo Studios claimed that the upcoming Zynga Bingo was a cheap knock-off of its Bingo Blitz game, which already has a million daily players on Facebook.

DICE is looking for an anti-cheat security expert, according to a new job listing on its official site. The Battlefield series developer is looking for someone willing to take up residence in its home office (Stockholm, Sweden) where they will be charged with "secure the online experience for all DICE titles." Whoever dons the mantle of "Anti-Cheat Administrator" will have their work cut out from them, given all the hacking and cheating going on with its latest title Battlefield 3.

Another day, another developer accusing Zynga of swiping its game design. Bingo Blitz developer Buffalo Studios has accused Zynga of copying its design for its recently announced Bingo game. They say Zynga has "obviously played" its Bingo game. Last week iPhone game developer Nimblebit accused Zynga of ripping off its popular mobile title Tiny Tower.

The company put together a side-by-side comparison of its game against Zynga's recently announced Bingo game here.