Sued by Nintendo
suedbynintendo.com
suedbynintendo.com
Nintendo also claimed a patent on showing a ghost image of your previous race (the ghost car in Mario Kart)
But there is no IP in the gaming industry more vigorously defended than Tetris. The Tetris Company LLC has:
* trademarks on the name Tetris, the wordmark, and the word "tetrimino" to refer to the pieces, of course
* trade dress rights on otherwise generic elements, such as the shape of the tetromino pieces themselves and the Russian folk song "Korobeiniki", when used in video games
* copyright on the concept of "a video game where tetromino pieces fall and you must arrange them to make lines". You'd think that this element would not be copyrightable, but Atari v. Philips, which concerned Pac-Man and clones thereof, established that a video game is copyrightable as a form of audiovisual performance, not just program code, which means that if a game looks and behaves enough like a copyrighted game such as Tetris ("substantial similarity"), it can be infringing. And it's near-impossible to make a falling-tetromino puzzle game without making it look and behave like Tetris. Henk and Alexey have retained some of the best lawyers American capitalism can buy, and they've successfully litigated copyright actions against cloners of Tetris and have had "Tetris clone" material seized at the border on copyright grounds.
When does that date from?
Because I remember playing "Invade-a-load" on the C64 in the 80s, while waiting for (I think) Slimey's Mine to load off tape. It was fun enough that sometimes I would stop the tape and just play space invaders for a while.
(edit - ah, and there it is, at the bottom of the fast-loader article on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_loader
"In 1995, Yoichi Hayashi of Namco Ltd. invented a variant of the Invade-a-Load technique for use with optical disc based platforms such as PlayStation and applied for a patent. U.S. patent 5,718,632 was granted in February 1998 and assigned to Namco despite the Invade-a-Load prior art."
Hey, I guess that means...
Edit again: got my timelines wrong, 1995 was 30 years ago, this thing is long-expired. Ugh, I am old...)
The patent also expires a few months after the release of the game.
What's more is that you cannot release a Tetris game if you follow the exact gameplay specification the Tetris Company mandates. And those specification prevent a whole range of gameplay, leading to stagnating game design and the impossibility to play some higher difficulty style of Tetris.
It's as if the First Person Company LLC mandated a Halo style floating jump with regenerating shield. There would be no classic Quake and the Doom revival series (2016, 2020, 2025) wouldn't be able to center its gameplay on agression (or at least, it would feel very weird).
Patent issued in 1998, yet there was prior art dating back to the C64 era - I remember 'invade-a-load', where you could play a Space Invaders clone while a larger game loaded from tape.
We all know that if TTC were to sue any of us, they'd be likely to lose their trademarks outright. Which is also why they haven't.
You can't have a copyright in a concept. You can only have a copyright in an expression of something.
Tetris's copyright is ironclad. If you make a game that looks and plays like Tetris, you are infringing. Period. End of story.
(Yes, this means that M-x tetris in Emacs is infringing, and will have to be removed at some point, like the Yow lines were.)
Those are expressions, not concepts.
>In particular, the idea that look and feel are not subject to copyright now belongs on the list of "false things programmers believe about copyright".
You brought them up, not me. I don't think you understand copyright law very much. I also don't value at all any assumptions programmers make about copyright law, as I'm proven here nearly every day, such beliefs are based in glaring errors.
> someone else's concept
Again, concepts are not copyrightable. Nothing you have posted indicates otherwise. When your expression looks exactly like another persons expression... that's what substantial similarity is. I find it very odd that you think looking like something isn't an expression but is actually just a concept instead. It's not.
>Tetris's copyright is ironclad. If you make a game that looks and plays like Tetris, you are infringing. Period. End of story.
Yeah, and?
There is no definitive answer for what is an idea (not copyrightable) and what is an expression of an idea (copyrightable). It really depends on the judge and what the prevailing legal opinion is. During the nineties it was generally thought that software's "look and feel" was not copyrightable, and there were rulings to that effect. That is no longer the case. These days, judges grant copyright coverage to very abstract ideas. For example, one may not own the copyright on "side-scrolling platformer", but if you make a "side-scrolling platformer where you hit bricks from below to get power-ups, collect coins, and jump on enemies to defeat them", you may just be close enough to _Super Mario Bros._ that Nintendo might sue you and win. And we're not even getting into the specific names and appearances of the characters, enemies, and setting.
This just reveals a terrible lack of imagination. The games Tetris was able to challenge frankly _are_ Tetris clones, up to the point they are indistinguishable from Tetris on screenshots and gameplay.
There are a million of "falling blocks" puzzle games that have not and can not be challenged by Tetris because they are not Tetris clones. E.g. Puyo Puyo / Kirby's Avalanche, Nintendo's own Dr. Mario, Nokia's ancient "Blocks" , etc.
I think this falls under the fair use doctrine for being a satiric piece (says "nintendont" instead of nintendo) but you never know these days.
And Nintendo cannot sue you if you are making the t-shirt for your own personal use.
If you make a rip-off of Star Wars, OK. Now show it to others.
Same with a t-shirt.
Of course, a lawsuit has to do with damages... what is the damage of a t-shirt 6 people saw?
But if you wear it on a TED talk?
Some of the cases are so ridiculously evil, I'm beginning to think they have black marketing division that mostly consists of lawyers.
Sony should have been mentioned in this description. Last I heard, they've been backing Palworld, in an attempt to get a lucrative not-Pokemon on their platform https://www.ign.com/articles/palworld-dev-signs-deal-with-so... It's an interesting proxy war
Why can't I just say "Fuck off, Nintendo, you have no power here."?
I recognize that there's a Nintendo of America entity that could file the suit, but then clearly only the USA's laws would be relevant.
I’m surprised that litigation didn’t make the front page of Hacker News when it happened.
There's a distinction to make: they are not only being "protective" of their IP, they are also very actively attacking the people that doesn't know legalese. Similar story with Oracle, if you need some reference to solidify what they're constantly pulling.
>Nintendo related content removed from the GMOD Steam Workshop
>Nintendo sent out a DMCA notice to Facepunch, forcing Garry to remove years of user-created addons related to Nintendo from the Steam Workshop.
Should have just kept addons as files you drag and drop into your gmod folder
You were; almost always, actually.
To also include Oracle and Tesla
I’m sure Nintendo was involved in some other lawsuit involving Tetris.
If we think beyond Nintendo for a moment and take a look at Lies of P, that game is the epitome of blatant stealing of ideas. Using Pinocchio, and lifting FROM's timing based approach and the whole system mechanics 1:1.
Sacrifices to the Church of Nintendo [1], "Currently at Nintendo" [2], Attorney to Nintendo: WTF? [3], Nintendo tries a DMCA and fails [4]
as well as the various deluges of Switch 2 bans for used games[5].
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgKY9hmbfgo [2] https://youtu.be/wfBEj9BW_ok [3]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUce6irE3H0 [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6gtmZI8oUU [5] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/scs5JU7s1hM?feature=share
Xbox has been permanently banning consoles from online, like Nintendo, for a decade and a half. Anyone remember the 2009 mega ban wave? One million Xboxes permanently banned simultaneously and Nintendo is somehow uniquely evil with the Switch 2 and we’ve never seen anything like this. Malarkey.
Although, that being said, Nintendo has been doing console bans since the 3DS. Every 3DS cart has a serial number and the server will ban consoles that happen to both be online with the same cart at the same time. Switch and Switch 2 have the same restriction. It was really only the Wii and DSi that were lax.
I suspect what really changed is that the MiG Switch exists. People just now got access to a cheap, reasonable, and most importantly, difficult to ban flashcart solution. What's going on is that people are dumping their games, selling them on, but still playing their now-illegal backups. Since those games have been dumped and are on the used market they're little time bombs that will explode and kill someone's console.
Even in the 3DS era, though, much of the piracy scene was focused on CFW and homebrew piracy apps. The thing about CFW developers is that they actually have the fear of God (or at least the feds) in their heart, so they ONLY provide enough instruction to get homebrew working. And the people providing piracy tools on top of that are part of the piracy scene, they know what gets banned, so they're all going to tell you a hundred times to NEVER. USE. PUBLIC. HEADERS. ONLINE.
But the MiG Switch people? They don't care. They just want to sell you a flashcart. Hell, Gateway (the 3DS equivalent) was run by people who shipped literal console-bricking malware to try and "protect" their flashcard against clones (ironically). The only reason this didn't become an issue on 3DS is that Gateway's precious exploit got patched and they couldn't steal exploits and tools from the CFW scene fast enough to keep the card working.
More, they're usually not interested in piracy, they're more interested in making some sprites slew around a screen to a chiptune.
Far more "nerd cred" vs "criminal expectation"
Nintendo is a TSE-listed public company with a market cap of about USD 110 billion.
"Oh this company is smaller than Microsoft and tencent, it's so vulnerable!" I genuinely don't know if you're just a corpo lover or a Nintendo PR person. At 110B, that's more than the GDP of Oman or Luxembourg or Lithuania. And you call a company that size
> "it's not like it's a juggernaut, it's legally vulnerable"
???
In Japan, if we want an exception to copyright for, say, training AI; we write a law that says "training AI is not an infringement of copyright". Simple, and straight to the point. In America we have tens of very expensive lawsuits just to bring the question to a judge that will probably rule the same way as the TDM exceptions in EU and Japanese law. The only difference is that a bunch of lawyers get richer and the courts get to feel important.
The ultimate effect on plaintiffs is that novel uses of copyrighted material become "sue-it-or-lose-it". If those authors want to retain the right to demand licensing fees for AI training, they have to sue OpenAI now, just to get it on the books that training is derivative, not transformative. If they wait until 10 years out it's already become an established norm and no judge will disrupt it.
So in Japan, Nintendo can afford to leave certain things in the grey area, unless they actually want it gone. In America, not so much. That being said, it probably has less bearing on Nintendo's actions as one might think from how I described it. Because novel uses of copyrighted material are, well, novel. They don't happen all that often.
“Fair Use” isn’t “English Common Law”, it is an American doctrine; most other common law jurisdictions - including England (and the rest of the UK), Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa - have the narrower fair dealing doctrine instead.
According to Wikipedia [0] the main countries other than the US with fair use are Malaysia, Poland and South Korea. Singapore has recently adopted a hybrid model combining elements of both fair use and fair dealing.
> Well, the answer's simple: they can't, because judges aren't allowed to legislate from the bench over there. In civil law countries, the law is the law, full stop; judges can't add onto it in any meaningful way.
This is nonsensical. Most common law countries don’t have fair use, they have the narrower fair dealing doctrine instead; but some civil law jurisdictions do have fair use, such as Poland and South Korea. Common vs civil law has no real bearing on fair use vs fair dealing vs neither - it is a policy choice legislators make when enacting statutory copyright law.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_dealing#/media/File%3AFai...