In this paper we present a prototypical implementation of a pipeline that allows the automatic generation of a German Sign Language avatar from 2D video material. The presentation is accompanied by the source code. We record human pose movements duri
ng signing with computer vision models. The joint coordinates of hands and arms are imported as landmarks to control the skeleton of our avatar. From the anatomically independent landmarks, we create another skeleton based on the avatar's skeletal bone architecture to calculate the bone rotation data. This data is then used to control our human 3D avatar. The avatar is displayed on AR glasses and can be placed virtually in the room, in a way that it can be perceived simultaneously to the verbal speaker. In further work it is aimed to be enhanced with speech recognition and machine translation methods for serving as a sign language interpreter. The prototype has been shown to people of the deaf and hard-of-hearing community for assessing its comprehensibility. Problems emerged with the transferred hand rotations, hand gestures were hard to recognize on the avatar due to deformations like twisted finger meshes.
This Article addresses the interaction between digital technology and Intellectual Property Law. Despite its obvious benefits, the Internet was and still is a major source of legal obscurity. The one million dollar question is to what extent, if at a
ll, can the law of intellectual property strike the correct balance between innovation and the protection of Intellecual Property Rights? Keeping the concepts of digital liabraries, peer 2 peer systems and second life, answering the previous questions seems to be easirer said than done.
Keeping the above in mind, this Article highlights the legal argument in the United States of America, Canada and the UK. As such, it does focus, unexclusivily, on the Common Law System.
The conclusion we have reached is that any answer could be anticipated to deal with these technological issues from a legal point of view should not be taken as an excuse to hinder the development of business
