Tetris

[skeezix]

No, they "own" (and I use this term loosely) the Intellectual Property of the Tetris game. Reread the mail; if you change the name of your Tetris game to -anything-, the bots might not pick it up but it's still on the lawyer's radars, and still a Tetris clone. They still have grounds to sue or whatever.

The reason behind all this is unlike the creators of Pacman, Asteroids etc. The Tetris Company don't want to lose their IP rights to the game so they are vigorously defending them like assholes, hunting down every freeware game that resembles Tetris. Unfortunately a lot of freeware clone games are illegal in the same way, but fortunately a lot of the companies and businesses that own the rights just don't care.

- Rico

Its important to note that they have to hunt down peope who abuse their IP if they want to keep the IP; if you do not defend your IP, you lose it. So we dont' like it, and maybe they dont' like it, but if they wish to keep the Tetris(tm) IP marketable and valuable, they have to defend it. They likely expect to make money for years to come, so here they are.. its just a fact of life. Its their job.. they're not asshole, they're doing their job :/

Asd to the lawsuit.. they're entirely within their rights if they are being threatened; if your cashflwo si being damaged, you can sue someone if they're being evil about it; this lawsduit if they did it woudl fail, since they do not have a Tetris producton GP32, and so there is no money being lost to competition; If they did put a proeuct out, they coudl force the various GP32 tetris games to stop being distributed.

Theyre' already on dubious grounds, since theres a million Tetris-like games on platforms they do have legal versions on, so we know the above is just barkign down a tree.

As to distribution on GP32x.. if they gamea are infringing, then GP32x is a distributor of illegal apps, and so is also lible. So GP32x shoudl take them down likely, thoguh normally you'd go to legal councel first.. that costs green

Really, its all somethign the Tetris guys have to do, and we have to live with; we coudl likely ignore it, since its not worth theirtime to sue anyone. But the fact of the matter is Rico and the boys,l and the various authors, dont' need this, so the threat will likely stand. Such is life.

How to fight it?

Release the games as public domain, with names removed, and artwork and stuff change d alittle. So its out there, without claim. Thats all you can do. But you're on your own with that one

jeff

 

[RoboJoe32]

ooooooooo what's the tetris company gonna do? Pay off a lawyer with a pack of cigs and a pack of juicy fruit? (ignore my smart arse comment, tetris just sells poor, hence the joke) They don't seem so hurt about the creator of tetris being screwed

I say we PO them royally and port tetris battle gaiden (Tetris with super moves basicly, and cool characters) or make a remake of it for GP32 called BattleBlox, and to keep lame lawyers from accessing it, have it so you have to enter a code (left right left right L R start) to make it start

 

[Mofokubik]

Well there are tons of homebrew tetris games out there, why cant gp32 have one.
There is one for DreamCast and yet it remains.

 

[Delsabre]

this reminds me of a sugar-packet (the kind in McDonalds n stuff) company that tried to copyright the light blue color that they used on the inside of their packages ...

this makes me so mad i think im going to copyright the words "the" and "company" and then sue them for using my "intellectual property".

 

[Rico]

Its important to note that they have to hunt down peope who abuse their IP if they want to keep the IP; if you do not defend your IP, you lose it.

Yeah that I agree with (as I said earlier). You might not think they make money out of it, but they do, with Gameboy, PlayStation and PC rights to the games and millions being sold.

Difference between this and Mario is... well, most Mario clones don't live up to the real Mario. The graphics are ripped but poorly put-together, the levels badly-designed, or whatever - Nintendo doesn't consider it a threat to their sales. As soon as a game gets close to being good (Giana Sisters for example) they will strike. In other words, it's hard to steal their idea and do it well.

However, Tetris is really easy to code. In this case the idea is really worth something but also easy to steal and reproduce. TTC are faced with a lot more infringers to deal with.

Will they succeed? Doubt it. Once things are released publically (especially if with source), can't stop them. WASTE never got stopped by AOL, for example. However unfortunately a lot of good games will have their distribution cut down because some rich kids decided to bully the little guys.

- Rico

 

[Chip]

Tomorrow I'm going down to the patent office and patenting the game of 5 card draw and tradmarking the name "Poker". Then all I have to do is sue Vegas, Atlantic City, and a couple dozen indian reservations for making money off of my intelectual property.

 

[Shane]

:rolleyes: Some really idiotic americans tried to patent a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich withouth the crust. And they go it.

 

[pip]

No, they "own" (and I use this term loosely) the Intellectual Property of the Tetris game. Reread the mail; if you change the name of your Tetris game to -anything-, the bots might not pick it up but it's still on the lawyer's radars, and still a Tetris clone. They still have grounds to sue or whatever.

The reason behind all this is unlike the creators of Pacman, Asteroids etc. The Tetris Company don't want to lose their IP rights to the game so they are vigorously defending them like assholes, hunting down every freeware game that resembles Tetris. Unfortunately a lot of freeware clone games are illegal in the same way, but fortunately a lot of the companies and businesses that own the rights just don't care.

- Rico

according to circulars available from the United States Library of Congress (available at http://www.loc.gov/copyright/circs/circ61.pdf and http://www.loc.gov/copyright/fls/fl108.pdf ), a game cannot be copyrighted (only patented), which refutes much of TTC's copyright claims on the game, leaving the trademark on "Tetris" as TTC's most significant claim on any government-granted monopoly. TTC no longer seems to pursue "clones" of the game under such names as Bedter ( http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/2430/bedter.html ), Quadra ( http://quadra.sourceforge.net/ ), KSirtet ( http://ksirtet.sourceforge.net/ ) and BinaryBlocks game ( http://www.evilpigeon.net/pcsoftware/ ), that do not appear confusingly similar to "Tetris".

Luckily, you are rico, any site on the subject will tell you just that, they do _not_ own the copyrights to the design (a game cannot even be copyrighted), just the name. If you actually stole the source code or ripped the graphics, it would be illegal, but as long as you write everything yourself it is perfectly legal.

Source:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris
http://www.everything2.com/?node=the+tetris+company

 

[Rico]

If you're right, hando should bring back the games to his site right now, right? Sorry but they've already seen success by intimidation. Although I couldn't read much of that article (too many annoying 'Bzzt! Wrong'-style sarcastic comments) The Tetris Company are nevertheless looking for rights and halting the distribution of Tetris-based games. Even if you are right and the law on your side, it doesn't seem to be making any difference.

 

[Flack]

Who knows, with the European launch planned, maybe the Tetris people are trying to tell us they have something planned for the GP32?

 

[Rico]

God I hope not. I seriously doubt the folks at The Tetris Company have anything worth paying even 4 dollars for. (Well maybe RF multiplay )

 

[Twimfy]

I bet that the Tetris representative that sent you that e-mail/letter looks just like the annoying Zig Zag block!

In fact it's probably old Ziggy himself.

 

[NiN^_^NiN]

the Zigsters there :blink:

h34r: