The Rhode Island Economic Development Corp. and Bank of New York Mellon Trust Co. are now the proud (?) owners of the game assets of 38 Studios. While we doubt the state of Rhode Island will be releasing Kingdoms of Amular 2 or Copernicus anytime soon, we can expect that they will offer the assets for both of those franchises up for sale at some point in the not-too-distant future.

According to the BBC, one of the world's largest BitTorrent sites in the world has been shut down. Ukraine-based BitTorrent site Demonoid has been shut down by Ukrainian authorities. Officials from the Ukraine's Ministry of Internal Affairs raided the data center that was hosting website's servers.

Hey, remember last month when we poked fun at the ability to make “whoopee” in Zynga’s latest ‘ville’ game The Ville and noted the similarity to the ability to make “woo-hoo” in EA’s Sims Social?

Yeah, good times.

Well, EA thinks “whoopee” and other features are just a bit too similar to its game and are suing Zynga for copyright infringement.

France's new culture minister has indicated that she will drastically cut the budget from the internet copyright infringement agency Hadopi. She will also encourage the agency to lay off on kicking people off the Internet, much to the delight of internet advocates. Culture Minister Aurélie Filippetti has appointed former Canal+ pay-TV CEO Pierre Lescure to conduct a review of France's Act II, a set of rules for protecting culture in the digital age - which includes the use of the Hadopi agency for enforcement.

As more details emerge on the secretly negotiated trade agreement between Canada and the European Union, online rights activists are voicing their opinions on why it is a bad idea and why they are getting a strange sense of déjà vu. Critics of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which was ultimately voted down by the European Parliament, have warned that those forces in Europe and other parts of the world behind such treaties will continue to push parts of that treaty that most citizens do not want.

Travis Baldree, president of Runic Games is publicly calling out Chinese mobile developer EGLS for stealing art assets and sound files from his company's game, Torchlight. The game in question is an iOS-based massively multiplayer game called Armed Heroes Online. Baldree noticed the striking similarities in the character art from the game and Torchlight and took to Twitter earlier this month to point it out:

Megaupload found Kim DotCom won't have to worry about the prospect of being shipped off to the United States to faces various charges related to the U.S. government's takedown of the popular file sharing and storage site. A New Zealand judge has pushed DotCom's extradition hearing to March of 2013. Naturally this will give DotCom more time to prepare for whatever lawyers for the U.S. government can throw at him.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on health rights, Anand Grover, has praised the European Parliament's recent vote to reject the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), calling it a step in the right direction in ensuring that citizens of the world have access to affordable and essential medication. The European Parliament overwhelmingly voted against the international anti-piracy trade agreement on July 4.

Steven Davis dropped us a note informing us of a trailer that, he claims, he made for "some Hollywood producers" who asked him to make a movie trailer mock-up of Namco Bandai's classic arcade game Dig Dug. He calls the film "a fan made trailer" and lists all the materials he used to piece it together. The movie borrows scenes from such films as The Core, Tekken, Reign of Fire, 9, Monsters Vs.

THQ has returned the rights to the Devil's Third back to its creators. The promising third-person shooter from Ninja Gaiden producer Tomonobu Itagaki and his development team at Valhalla Game Studios will have to find another publishing partner. During E3 THQ unloaded the rights to another major franchise - UFC - on EA for an undisclosed amount of cash.

Speaking to TorrentFreak, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom alleges that Vice President Joe Biden ordered the Megaupload shutdown at the behest of former Connecticut Senator (D) and current Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) President Chris Dodd. He claims that he has information from a "reliable source" that the Megaupload case and the subsequent takedown of the file storage site was a "gift to Hollywood."

The European Parliament has officially rejected the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). The Parliament voted 478 to 39 to reject the ACTA, which means that it will never be implemented in any member country of the European Parliament. The news is not surprising, given that five committees voted against the treaty leading up to the showdown on the floor of the European Parliament this week. It also didn't help that ACTA was negotiated in secret and citizens in various member countries protested against it because of its loose and murky language.

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.