Intellectual property is one of the key plot driving themes in Free Guy. The narrative revolves around Millie and Keys trying to find proof that Soonami Studio bought their game, lied about shelving it, and is using their code without paying them royalties. This is particularly tough to prove, since “the technology of cyberspace is a place where intellectual property is like the automobile… it is a place where the architecture of the place… makes it easy for intellectual property to be stolen” [1]. Even with modern coding tools like Github, code not made private is publicly available; while this code is technically legally protected, anyone can copy and paste it, and probably get away with it. This creates an important question: How should we protect IP generated when writing code and selling software? As computer science students, this is especially important, since our work will likely involve writing code/ creating IP, then either selling it to customers or an employer - who then owns our code and the rights to replicate it? How do we protect ourselves against theft?
Recent work done in the field recommends “precisely identifying hardware environments, software obfuscation, and prevention of disassembling and tampering” as best practices [2]. This is a good start: by writing code that is highly specialized to the work we're doing, the value of copying it for a vaguely similar project is greatly diminished. This recommendations of this article, in addition to educating ourselves on the legal system, signing IP agreements with the people we do business with, and self-advocacy allows us to take ownership of our work and creates a strong legal footing to challenge unauthorized use or replication of our work.
Another example of intellectual property would be Guy himself. During the climax of the movie, Millie negotiates with the owner of the game company that developed Free City, saying that she would give up her rights to sue for the money she is owed so long as he hands over the AI on the last undamaged server. Guy and his friends are treated as property of the game studio, intellectual property. They cannot leave the control of the game studio, and the owner of the game studio faces no legal repercussions for essentially nearly committing an AI genocide. This lack of legal action against the studio owner shows that AI are not considered people in the eyes of the law, but property.
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050921003902