Victor Keegan

Who is Victor Vezina? That’s the question bloggers have been asking since this Second Life avatar — a 3D representation of a real person — became embroiled in a legal dispute that could prove a test case for how much jurisdiction courts have over virtual worlds. Richard Minsky, an artist and publisher who also operates in Second Life, is suing Vezina, along with two directors of Linden Lab, owner of the virtual world, over use of the word “SLART”.

Minsky obtained a US trademark in March 2008; Vezina had launched an art gallery called

“SLart” in Second Life early in 2007. Curiously the case may turn on something as simple as a space between the letters SL and art: literally much ado about nothing. This is not how Minsky

sees it. In a 25-page complaint to the US District Court of New York he says that on March 16, 2008 his attorney, an avatar called Juris Amat, sent Vezina a “cease and desist” order that he failed to respond to. He also wrote to Linden Lab asking it to notify Vezina “to cease and desist from an unauthorised use of my SLART trademark in Second Life”.

Meanwhile, as the hunt for Vezina goes on, I can now reveal his true identity. It’s me. I joined

Second Life in 2006. When I expressed interest in building an art gallery, a Second Life neighbour actually living in Australia did it for me. As a logo I just put SL in capitals followed by art. I may have thought of “SLart” around the same time as Minsky. But that doesn’t matter

in US trademark law: who gets there first wins.

Now the offending sign has been taken down — not by me, but by Linden Lab, without my knowledge. When I complained I was told that “SL” was Linden’s trademark and I was allowed to use it only when followed by a space and two generic nouns, such as “SL Art Garden”. Thanks.

Clearly, I was a pawn caught in the crossfire between Linden, which claims the right to the letters SL unless followed by a space, and Minsky, who has registered SLART as a trademark and isn’t budging.

This raises key questions, not least does the writ of the US courts rule in virtual worlds? Meanwhile, a dispute raging about the distance between two letters of the alphabet enables me to say: watch this space.