Safeguard your digital assets, avoid costly legal traps, and navigate the hidden ownership threats of modern online business to secure your competitive advantage.
Intellectual property disputes in the digital economy rarely arise from a lack of legal rights—they arise from uncertainty about ownership, transfer, and control across increasingly complex creation and distribution chains. AI-assisted content, outsourced production, employee and contractor contributions, and platform-based licensing models have made traditional assumptions about authorship and chain of title significantly harder to rely on in practice.
This session takes a practitioner-focused approach to intellectual property and ownership risk, examining where legal structures commonly fail across modern digital workflows. It focuses on breakdowns in chain of title, licensing ambiguity, platform-mediated rights allocation, and the limits of standard contractual drafting in environments involving AI, contractors, and multi-party content creation.
Key Topics Discussed:
Founder | Argo Law
Jacob Vela is a transactional lawyer who specializes in helping game developers, content creators, website owners, app developers, and other creative professionals navigate their legal needs so they can focus on what they do best—creating. A lifelong creator, Jacob has been making games for as long as he can remember. What began with hand-drawn games on paper evolved into designing card games with friends, teaching himself programming, developing original video games throughout high school, and eventually publishing his first commercial game on Steam. This firsthand experience as a creator gives him a unique understanding of the legal and business challenges faced by those working in the creative industries. While studying law, Jacob recognized a significant need for legal professionals who truly understood the video game industry. Although gaming is one of the world's largest entertainment sectors, it has comparatively few lawyers dedicated to serving developers. This realization, combined with his strong interest in intellectual property and contract law, led him to focus his practice on supporting game developers and creative entrepreneurs. His own experience navigating legal and business issues while bringing collaborators onto one of his game projects further reinforced the importance of practical, creator-focused legal guidance. Today, Jacob works with game developers, content creators, website owners, app developers, and other creative professionals around the world. As digital platforms continue to make publishing and entrepreneurship more accessible than ever, he helps clients address the legal challenges that come with growth, from protecting intellectual property and forming companies to drafting contracts and managing creative collaborations. Committed to helping creators build sustainable businesses, Jacob focuses on preventing legal problems before they arise, allowing clients to concentrate on innovation and creativity. As both a lawyer and an active game developer, he brings practical industry experience alongside legal expertise, making him a trusted advisor to creators looking to protect and grow their work.
