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World of Warcraft seems to be the focus of virtual law, lawsuits, angry gnomes, and all sorts of fun these days. Not only is a player suing IGE due to their gold selling practices, but Blizzard also took MDY, makers of the glider program, to court. Now, MDY and Blizzard are moving closer to getting this battle finished.

The arena of choice is the US District Court of Arizona and the two sides put forth their best efforts and finished their replies. Now we just have to wait for the federal justice system to make a decision on summary judgment. As Virtually Blind's Benjamin Duranske points out, that could take some time. Nonetheless, a few people are following such lawsuits closely since this is new territory for the courts and the MMO industry. Some fear the cases bring the federal government onto virtual turf, others think it is time for an end to cheating and want government help, and a few players are indifferent and just want to get their characters to level 70 before Wrath of the Lich King arrives.

Antonio Hernandez is a gamer with a mission. Since 2007, Antonio's lawsuit has been trying to put an end to gold sales from seller IGE and his case has made more than a few headlines. Antonio was mad at IGE for ruining his game and for companies like it for ruining the experience of other players. He decided that it was time for someone to take a stand against gold farmers, gold sellers, and the people behind the gold selling industry.

The battle is still raging and, just the other day, his attorney filed for his gold selling case to become a class action lawsuit. A judge will review it, and if approved, millions of World of Warcraft players, and perhaps those in other MMOs, will have a chance to fight back against gold selling. The lawsuit shows no sign of losing steam, so be sure to take a break in the inn and check back for updates.

Shanda, operator and developer of several popular online games in China, is being sued by a gamer for RMB 100,000 (USD 14,300) in losses resulting from technical issues in Legend of Mir 2. The plaintiff, named Wen, claims to have spent roughly RMB 200,000 (USD 28,600) on virtual items in the game. Wen filed the lawsuit in Shanghai, following the disappearance of more than 30 of those virtual items over the course of a year.

Shanda is no stranger to controversy, or to the legal system of China. An assistant manager at Shanda received a five-year prison sentence in 2007, following the discovery that he and two conspirators established an illegal trade in virtual items in 2004 and 2005. The trio netted a cool RMB 2 million (USD 286,000) in just 14 months. Although the lawsuit presents little in the way of financial distress to Shanda and there is no way of knowing if the company was negligent at all in respect to Wen's grievance, this is yet another incident of negative publicity related to Legend of Mir 2.

The breakup of Perpetual Entertainment has been a messy, messy affair. The death of Gods and Heroes, the uncertainty over Star Trek Online, and former Perpetual PR representatives Kohnke's lawsuit were all signs of MMO development gone horribly wrong. Thankfully, it seems as though these threads are quickly sorting themselves out.

After Perpetual made some cranky throat-clearing noises early yesterday, saying the whole thing was "ambiguous and unintelligible", they must have decided it wasn't quite that ambiguous after all. Shacknews is reporting that Kohnke has dropped its suit after the two parties found some sort of mutual resolution.

As might be expected, the particulars of the agreement are not forthcoming. The initial suit was for some $300,000, and with its conclusion that sounds like it may be some of the last news we'll hear about Perpetual for the time being.

While it's not a part of the ongoing case of Hernandez v IGE, a newly announced legal action by the AG for the state of Florida will probably be of interest to you. The Attorney General issued an investigative subpoena against the notorious gold-selling outfit today, seeking information on possible illegal activities carried out within the state (and across the country). The Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act was invoked, and the 'investigative' nature of the subpoena means that company records relating to everything from marketing to organizational elements are now to be included in the state's inquiry.

The subpoena seeks financial and sales information, the identity of specific World of Warcraft accounts owned or controlled by IGE, the identity of World of Warcraft accounts that IGE has power leveled, and the IP addresses IGE used to log into World of Warcraft to distribute products sold by IGE. The subpoena also seeks documents which show all websites owned or controlled by IGE or its affiliates at any time.

For a minute there, we thought Perpetual Entertainment was clear of the post-Gods & Heroes-cancellation mess and that Star Trek Online would enjoy (relatively) smooth sailing from here on out. It turns out that drama isn't over yet. There's been a new development that raises new concerns and sheds light on what's been going on over the past two months.

A few days ago, Kohnke, the PR firm that promoted Gods & Heroes, filed a lawsuit against Perpetual. Kohnke believes Perpetual owes it up to $280,000. Just prior to the cancellation of Gods & Heroes, the bigwigs at Perpetual sold Star Trek Online to another company they owned. So in other words, Perpetual sold STO to itself. Kohnke has accused Perpetual of doing this so as to avoid paying up -- which would be a violation of the law.

We here at Massively are game journalists, not lawyers, so don't take this as an expert opinion, but it looks like the worst case scenario for Perpetual is that it'll have to sell STO in order to pay Kohnke. Alternatively, Kohnke could settle for a stake in STO as payment, or Perpetual could find another investor for STO to make paying Kohnke easier. All that assumes that Kohnke wins the case, though. If it doesn't, it'll be just another day for Star Trek Online.

If only Perpetual existed in Star Trek's 24th century, in which there is no such thing as money -- except for Latinum, of course!

According to the New York Post, A group of Second Lifers are suing Thomas Simon, aka Rase Kenzo, a 36 year old Flushing, NY resident for copyright violations. The plaintiffs in the suit are: Kevin Alderman of Florida; Shannon Grei, of Oregon; Linda Baca of Indiana; Teasa Copprue of Michigan; Kasi Lewis of Georgia; and Michael Hester of Virginia. Grei supports herself through item sales through her Second Life store -- for the uninitiated, Second Life allows users to "cash out" their in-game currency, called Lindens, for real-world currency.

There's two issues here -- and this is a good time to mention that not only am I not a lawyer, I don't even play one on TV -- the alleged copyright infraction and the methods used by the plaintiffs to gain their evidence. Because the plaintiffs found their evidence by entering his SL home uninvited, he feels U.S. search and seizure laws should apply. However, at the time of this writing, I am not aware if Simon has filed a counter-suit.

Second Life allows content creators to place restrictions on objects they create: you can set them to be unmodifiable, non-transferrable, and non-copyable. Allegedly, Simon used an exploit to break the permissions and re-sell the items. VintFalken offers some technical insight on the matter (potential NSFW links).

Linden Lab has been overhauling its website and promotional material lately for the poorly understood virtual world Second Life. One of the key changes to be spotted is the alteration of the long-standing descriptor, "Second Life is a 3D online digital world imagined, created and owned by its residents", which now only reads, "Second Life is a 3D online digital world imagined, and created by its residents", and there's signs that the wording is still evolving a little.

The unannounced change has caused a fair bit of speculation, especially among those who were never all that certain as to what the ownership consisted of in the first place. In fact, that seems to be at the heart of the reason for the change.