User:Patentee

George Gerstman is an intellectual property attorney and a retired partner in Seyfarth Shaw LLP. Gerstman was instrumental in having the copyright laws apply to video games and computer games. In 1981 he led the battle by video game manufacturers to have the courts declare video games to be protectable by copyright. Prior to 1981 the courts had not decided whether the sights and sounds of a video game were protected by copyright. The video game copiers argued that the sights and sounds of the games were not copyrightable because of the participation by the player and because the sights and sounds were allegedly not fixed in a tangible medium. However, this argument made by Gerstman's opponent was rejected in the landmark case of Stern Electronics, Inc. v. Kaufman, in which Gerstman was the lead attorney for Stern Electronics and the Court of Appeals held that the sights and sounds of a video game are copyrightable. Gerstman was also a pioneer in the development of computer law. He was lead attorney in the first court decision concerning copyrightability of software embodied in a read-only memory (ROM). He was also a lead attorney in the first court decision considering the "computer program backup copy" exception to the copyright laws. Gerstman has an electrical engineering degree from the University of Illinois and began his professional career in 1960 as a Patent Examiner at the U.S. Patent Office, which at that time was located in Washington, D.C. He received a law degree with honors from George Washington Law School. In 1964 he became a member of the Illinois Bar and was registered to practice as a Patent Attorney before the United States Patent Office.