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Tetris Under Fire 93
Andrew Bednarz writes
"How many people are aware of what The Tetris Company is
doing? They're claiming they own copyright on "the look
and feel and trade dress" of Tetris. They are attempting
to remove all unauthorised tetris games!" Considering
that there are dozens of tetris clones (many distributed
under the GPL) I suspect their quest is futile. I'm not sure
how I feal about this one. Their claim is probably legit,
and the above story compares this to the industry allowing
only one game in a genre, but tetris is tetris- its not a block
game genre, its a specific game with rules we are all familiar
with. Different side scrollers have different rules. Hmm.
Wierd case. What do you think?
Maybe, maybe not? (Score:1)
Alexander guy invented the concept, and didn't
"license" it or anything. I thought the Tetris Co.'s copyright was merely in name. I guess they do have a point however, tetris is a very specific game. Wouldn't be hard to by-pass this though, there are many tetris-like games like Columns, Puyo Puyo etc.
I knew that I saw this somewhere before (Score:1)
The problem I have (Score:1)
Yes, there is a copyright (Score:1)
"Tetris is a trademark of Elorg
Tetris copyright and trademark licensed to Sphere, Inc, and sublicensed to Microsoft Corporation."
(I left out the part about M$ being the great universal Satan. but the rest is a direct copy.)
Guess it is copyrighted. Can anyone add to this?
Legal precedents (Score:1)
essential Look and Feel cant be copyrighted.
i.e. For a spreadsheet, you can copyright the
Lotus 123 sheet layout.
Similarly, for a dropping blocks of four
squares game, you cant copyright the look and
feel itself, only implementations of it.
League for Programming Freedom have... (Score:1)
a useful archive of stuff.
http://lpt.ai.mit.edu [mit.edu]new law firm (Score:1)
The Tetris corporation (or whatever) should get a new law firm. This one evidently doesn't understand the ramifications of the "look and feel" part.
In some respects, it really is a shame that MS won the "look and feel" case Apple brought against them. It would have forced MS to do something truly innovative to win market share from Apple. But that was then and this is now and this Tetris company is tilting at windmills.
--mtngrown
Pentominoes (Score:1)
I'm under the impression that the tetris shapes are based on an ancient (i.e. before America was discovered) game called 'Pentominoes'. This involved fitting shapes, such as L - | etc, into different sized rectangles.
The whole look and feel copyright is stupid as most design ideas are based partly on earlier ones. However I'm still convinced that microsoft will patent breathing one day.
-SP
Copyright infringement (Score:2)
The problem I have (Score:1)
Copyright infringement (Score:1)
Instead of providing an infrastructure upon which
the free market can evolve, it is more and more
abused to destroy the very market it should
help to flourish. Copyright and patents are used
as means for destroying opponents, not as means
to protect ones own products from misfits. Today,
the copyright-holders, not anymore the "infringers" have become the biggest misfits.
The Tetris company is a very nice example for this
kind of miserable copyright-exploitation. Do nothing, buy copyrights, sue to world and make
big money.
This is a very serious issue for the whole society. If there isn't found a good solution
we'll end up in a world looking like the worst
nightmares of William Gibson.
Welltris? (Score:1)
Does anyone know where I can find a Welltris clone? I used to have it for DOS, but now I can't find it anywhere :(.
PS Though *nix versions are fine (of course), a Windoze version would also be acceptable, as I do end up there occasionally ;).
Copyright infringement (Score:1)
This sort of thing goes on all the time, but only in the software field do we find so much flak over the subject.
The biggest problem with the software industry today is that people see lots of money in it (thanks to M$). That sort of high payoff potental is just the sort of thing that attracts lawyors like bees to honey.
95% of games are "ripoffs" (Score:1)
There are only a few basic themes or genres in gaming. Of course good games take an interesting approach to an old subject. What's to stop people from ripping off Quake II? Nothing, in fact, look at all the people that succesfully have
There will always be tetris-like games until someone get a patent (god forbid) on that specific type of puzzle or something. Note I did not say copyright -- the most their enforcement means is that people will have to stop using the word "tetris" in their game's name ... hardly a big deal. Look at all the hundreds of local and store variations for Coca-Cola and Dr. Pepper ...
I guess that means we're going to have to come up with a new name for that type of puzzle game.
Any suggestions?
The problem I have (Score:1)
In the case of Tetris, I think that horse escapted from the barn a long time ago...
www.rotaru.com is down (Score:1)
If you go to the site there is a vague explanation.
www.rotaru.com is down (Score:1)
If you look on the www.tetris.com site, click on "the company" then "piracy", Then click on "Tetris is a copyrighted game -- what does this mean to me" they have the following quote:
The protected expression of the TETRIS games is the concept of a "brick" or "block" game in which differently-shaped Tetranimoes, each including four cells (or even some other number), fall from the top of the screen and are arranged by the player to complete horizontal lines. Later versions of TETRIS, whether created by Elorg or others, are derivative works. These may not be made, used or distributed without the consent of the Tetris Company.
This, in effect, says that anyone who distributes anything remotely like tetris is a pirate. Could this be grounds for a libel suit against them? I guess you would have to prove that they are knowingly damaging the reputations of freeware authors by calling them "pirates". Or something. Anyway, I Am Not A Lawyer.
Bending the rules and twisting the name... (Score:2)
Does bending the rules and twisting the name evade this particular sort of liscensing?
--Threed
Countersuit for legal fees (Score:1)
What's wrong with that? I'll tell you... (Score:1)
The problem with that is that it means companies will be much less inclined to take an idea and improve it. It means that we'll be stuck with some copyrighted piece of software and have no way to recreate it in order to add features or take it in new directions without risking a copyright suit. In short, it would be bad for Linux and bad for the software industry as a whole.
Face it. If companies had been this patent and copyright happy 20-30 years ago, we wouldn't have a Linux. We wouldn't have much of the software that we do have because someone else would have copyrighted some similar idea and nobody would have been able to write the software they wanted to write because they would have feared being sued.
heh.. (Score:1)
How many years has xtris been doing this now?
Copyright infringement (Score:1)
Of course, since it's been going on so long, it's just considered status quo, which people tend to equate with being ok.
Make the plaintiff pay for meritless cases (Score:1)
Serves the colonies right for leaving in the first place...
dylan_-
--
I want to see them.. (Score:2)
(I remember seeing this before..the most amusing thing is where they refer to the creation of anything remotely similar to Tetris as 'piracy' and claim that these games are made from 'inferior materials'..)
Daniel
The Link that says it all... (Score:1)
http://atarihq.com/tsr/special/tetrishist.html
Valid case, but --- (Score:1)
Unfortunately (for them...) this rings of the whole
just my USD$0.02
Complete and utter bul###t. (Score:2)
If these yahoos choose to sue then take it to a british court because there is no way they can win.
PS : In England, Jamaica and some other commonwealth countries the looser pays all the expenses and when you bring a merit-less case ( like this one ) the courts are extremely hard on you and have bean known to award punitive damages and to fine you for creating public mischief.
Get them to pick on Troll Tech. (Score:2)
Troll is small by corporate standards but it would be nice for these gays to pick on them since Troll would win easily and recoup the cost of going to court.
Look-and-Feel Copyrights (Score:1)
Imagine if id wanted to get a look and feel copyright with wolfenstein and claim that all first person perspective 3D games with a gun were their invention. It would be a reasonable extrapolation if the look and feel of tetris could be copyrighted.
More background on this (Score:1)
__
This isn't news (Score:1)
How can this be news? This story is as old as the hills.
Kris
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/ [kriston.net]
Copyright infringement (Score:1)
Slashdot and Geocities (Score:1)
There should be a lawing forbidding the articles found on Geocities to be posted on Slashdot. Seriously folks, we are just generating hits, giving Geocities all the more power to continue what thet are doing.
Ah, I feel better. Back to coding...
--Ivan, weenie NT4 user, Jon Katz hater: bite me!
I thought a russian guy did it... (Score:1)
I know for a fact that a russian guy made tetris.. and those guys just stole it and lisenced it..
They just suck.
Until I recieve a court order, I'm doing nothing (Score:2)
I assume this is a small company, there's no way they have the resources to take every person who's ever written a tetris-like game to court. So I believe this is mostly a bluff.
I don't understand why they have such a beef with us "tetris cloners" anyway. Why don't they spend their time making a newer version and sell it rather than removing all tetris clones and not making any money.
Look-and-Feel Copyrights (Score:2)
The problem is, as stated, the target is merely a student, and most likely doesnot have access to the required monies to defend himself in what passes for the court of law.
What can they do to a gpl project? (Score:1)
Anyhow, what can they do besides send out "cease and desist" emails? Can't the project simply stop distributing their efforts? Or is that against the gpl? What if the project is using a "totally free" license?
I'm working on a game in the same genre.. the game play is similar to tetris 2 (tetris flash) but there are instead 4 different colors and you have to get them 4-in-a-row to score. It is score-based (original tetris) as opposed to level-based (dr. mario) but I suck at coding
Too Little Too Late. (Score:1)
If the creator of Tetris had wanted to protect his copyright he should have done so long ago. Even if he couldn't afford to sue anyone, he should have protested anyway. By not doing so he gave people no reason to suspect that he was interested in the copyright of the game.
Although IANAL, I would have thought that the copyright on the Tetris concept would have been diluted too much - Tetris appeared about 15 years ago, and to start trying to enforce copyright now is just too late. I know that the courts in the UK would throw this out without hesitation!
Perhaps these developers should club together and get a restraining order placed against the Tetris company for threatening behaviour...
Can you copyright the rules to a game? (Score:1)
The "look and feel", as others have pointed out, seems to be a baseless claim, as no one has succeeded in winning a l&f case in court. But what about the "rules" to the game (which I think the company is really alluding to in its email)? Can you copyright those to some extent?
If you took the game Monopoly, and replaced the squares and pawns with an "Open Source" theme (20 lines of source required to stay overnight on Debian Avenue, with the pawns being Eric Raymond, Richard Stallman, etc.), and just simply named it "The Bazaar", would you be in violation of Parker Brothers' copyright? The name doesn't sound like "Monopoly," but the rules and flow of the game are exactly like Monopoly's. I think you'd be asked to remove it pretty quickly from their legal team.
A lot of shareware games have seemed to dodge this issue by modifying the game just slightly so that it feels a lot like the original game, but is tweaked just enough that it's not a blatant copy. I think of PacMan and Galaga in the early days (there was "MunchMan" on the TI-99/4A, for example, and Ambrosia Software [ambrosiasw.com] made its business making copies of popular arcade titles). The precedent set in the industry, thus, seems to be that it's OK to copy an original, just as long as it's not an exact copy - i.e., add some "value" to it.
I think it's an interesting issue because I'd like to do a PalmPilot-version of the board game Quorridor. It's a great game with simple rules, and can even be played with a piece of paper and pennies. But since its rules are so simple (and perfect they way they are right now, in my mind), I wouldn't change the rules a bit (and then, without a doubt, I'd be ripping off someone else's great idea).
So, can you copyright the rules to a game?
SoulfryA game's "concept" versus its "rules" (Score:1)
You might argue that you can say, "Well, in Quake, you shoot at something, and when it gets so many bullets, it dies. And you have health, which can be replenished with a med pack, etc." These "rules" are much more vague than the Tetris rules, and allow for a lot of room for interpetation. Hence, no one is suing over Quake-like games.
What is needed is someone familiar with this type of law to take a look at the case.
Soulfry
Email campaign!! (Score:1)
esp@blueplanetsoftware.com
dlucas@blueplanetsoftware.com
Tell them that they are going to be associated with a company that tries to enforce a copyright by attacking the little guys first to support an unfounded copyright claim (see Apple vs. Microsoft).
They really won't let youuse the name "Tetris"... (Score:1)
Look and Feel Copyrights are Bad (Score:1)
if they try to claim a copyright on the look and
feel of the Tetris game concept, it should be
fought in court. If a look and feel copyright were
allowed to stand, it would set a dangerous precedent. Imagine if Apple had been able to copyright some of their GUI interface ideas, and thus control them for 95 years. Imagine if visicalc had copyrighted the spreadsheet interface.
not. (Score:1)
TI-85 for awhile. And its not exactly a hard
one to code either. And even if they do have
it copyrighted, does anyone care? I mean, who
the hell are they going to sue. Its even out
there as Java applets. I think this is just
another lamer company trieing to twistlasws to
make em rich.
Sad (Score:1)
Has anyone confirmed this? (Score:1)
I merely ask because if you check out www.tetris.com, you'll see quite a few messages posted on the boards about people looking for specific clones. Hosting these messages doesn't sound like the work of a rabid, lawyer-influenced capitalist.
I am with the Tetris creator (Score:1)
Nope, I don't really care about Doom or Street Fighter ripoffs. I don't see them as being unique as Tetris.
95% of games are "ripoffs" (Score:1)
Any suggestions?
"Tetrominoes"
That's what any decent recreational mathematician would call the pieces, anyway.
IAKAL^H^H^HNAL, but I think it would be hard to get a patent on it because of the existence of prior art - read Martin Gardner's books, or his old columns in Scientific American (sorry for the lack of specific issues or books, but its been 5 years since I was on a recreational math kick). Puzzles of the sort of "Fit the tetrominoes into a given space" have been around for a while. I just don't know if the vague concept of "pieces dropping from the sky" is patentable. I suppose if they were specific enough (there are 20 rows, each one is 17 squares wide, pieces drop at the rate of 1.32 squares per second, increasing each level by
"wierd" (Score:1)
So how do you explain this sentence:
"Einstein reigns over ancient scientists."
WELL DEAR GOD THEN! (Score:1)
money hungry morons (Score:1)
any claim of owning "intelectual property" and
all that. Of course, this means I have to be
for Microsloth in the anti-trust case, but
I can deal. This is obviously a case where a
large company is trying to bully the little guy.
Let them take you to court! You'll win and
change some _very_ bad precidents that have been
set.
The suit is probably going to be valid. (Score:1)
The precedent set is, basically, that all game clones are illegal. Guess this means I should stop working on GNUdius....