Skip to content
Adopted text

Policy implications of the development of virtual worlds – civil, company, commercial and intellectual property law issues

TA-9-2024-0029 · P9_TA(2024)0029 · PE753.772

Official HTML ↗ PDF DOCX
✦ In shortFull text
✦ In short · AI summary of this text, generated 26 Sept 2026

Written by a language model from the full text only; every figure comes from the text. The paragraph links open the paragraph a statement rests on — check the text itself before relying on it.

Parliament's resolution on the policy implications of virtual worlds for civil, company, commercial and intellectual property law. It says existing EU law already applies to virtual worlds, asks the Commission to clarify obligations, review private international law and protect users, and sets out concerns on data, liability, NFTs and copyright. It welcomes the Commission's definition of virtual worlds, calls for standardisation and interoperability, and says a future EU strategy should rest on research and evidence. It asks for guidelines, fitness checks of consumer law and rules on anonymity, data consent, accessibility and digital literacy. It finds that territorial rules on jurisdiction may not fit virtual worlds, that the definition of 'consumer' may leave NFT buyers unprotected, and that liability and identity rules need work. It states that intellectual property law fully applies to virtual worlds, that NFTs grant no IPR as such, that resale should bring authors remuneration, and that AI-generated outputs may not qualify for copyright.

Key points

  1. Notes that 'metaverse' and 'virtual world' lack consolidated definitions and welcomes the Commission's definition of virtual worlds as persistent, immersive environments based on 3D and extended reality.
  2. Stresses the importance of promoting standardisation and interoperability for an ecosystem of interconnected virtual worlds.
  3. Says virtual worlds accessible in the EU should respect the Charter of Fundamental Rights and existing EU law, and that what is illegal offline should be illegal online, with a strong focus on children.
  4. Lists legislation already applying to virtual worlds, including the Digital Services Act, Digital Markets Act, GDPR, AI Act proposal, Copyright Directive and EU Trade Mark Regulation.
  5. Calls on the Commission to develop guidelines and best practices clarifying the legal obligations of platform operators, service providers, developers and users, and to run fitness checks of consumer law.
  6. Says VR sensor data can be as identifiable as a fingerprint, and that consent should be obtained for each use case, with anonymous use enabled where identification is not required by law.
  7. Calls on the Commission to assess private international law rules, noting that the 'mosaic criterion' may not hold and that NFT purchasers on secondary markets may lose consumer protection under the Brussels I Regulation.
  8. Says providers of virtual goods and services must be identifiable and liable, that terms for virtual 'land' sales must be transparent, and that reporting and dispute resolution mechanisms should be set up.
  9. Warns that avatars and decentralised systems make it hard to hold wrongdoers accountable, calls for effective identity management and a know-your-business-customer principle, and welcomes study of a framework for DAOs.
  10. States that intellectual property law fully applies to virtual worlds, that use of protected content requires licensing or an exception, and that providers must be transparent about the scope of licences.
  11. Welcomes the twelfth edition of the Nice classification for registering trademarks for virtual worlds, and calls for measures against NFTs referencing trademarks without authorisation.
  12. Says NFTs grant no IPR as such, that authors should receive appropriate remuneration on each resale, and that AI-generated outputs may not qualify for copyright, calling for broader Commission dialogue on AI issues.

Who is affected

  • Platform operators, service providers, developers and users in virtual worlds, whose legal obligations and responsibilities should be clarified.
  • Consumers and businesses, who should not have to litigate in foreign courts to enforce their rights.
  • Creators and right holders, who should receive accurate reporting and remuneration for use and resale of protected works.
  • Vulnerable groups such as elderly people, persons with disabilities, children and people in rural and remote areas, for whom accessibility and digital skills must be ensured.
  • The Commission, which is asked to issue guidelines, run fitness checks and assess private international law rules.

Figures and deadlines

  • '10 to 15 years' — the time experts say virtual worlds may take to reach their full potential.

Legal basis: Articles 4, 16, 26, 81, 114 and 118 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.