Clones Wars: Video Game Litigation Illustrated | Hacker News Reader

Clones Wars: Video Game Litigation Illustrated

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78 pointsteachingaway17 comments

It's interesting to see the reasoning for each case, but it still strikes me as fundamentally arbitrary. The problem, of course, is that the rulings themselves are trying to capture a fundamentally arbitrary underlying idea: "does this rip that off?". If you asked 100 people, you'd get 100 lines drawn in different places.

Given that, the logic seems to do a good job most of the time. But, at its heart, its a silly question to ask. This quote really throws it into sharp relief (although I'm sure the full decision had more supporting detail):

> In Triple Town, the antagonist is a bear. In Yeti Town, the antagonist is a yeti… bears and yetis are both wild creatures.

Well.

To me, it just goes to show how very important ideas, perhaps core to our society, can be very poorly defined once you take a close look. That's at least a bit disturbing!

I have to say I'm actually pretty impressed at how much understanding of computer games these rulings show.

Yes - it almost gives one faith that the legal system gets these things right. :-)

That's where the armies of young overworked law clerks intervene.

> “Puck Man”, an identical clone of Pac-Man, was copyright infringement in Midway v. Artic (1983). Was “Puck Man” seriously the most original name they could come up with?

It's well known that the original Japanese name for the game was Puck-Man, and that Bally/Midway changed it for American audiences (the "P" in Puck was just begging for vandalism). So, it's even worse than inventing a bad name—they just plagiarized the original name…

oh! That could be an error on my part. I'll double check the case.

edit: I didn't realize Pac Man was originally "Puck Man" in Japan. I added a note to the article.

Artic just copied the original Japanese name. Pretty lazy:

"The only differences between Artic's Puckman game and Midway's Pac-Man game are (1) the names of the ghost characters in Artic's game are different from the names of Midway's characters, (2) the Midway copyright notice does not appear on Artic's game, and (3) the name of the game is different. Other than those trivial differences, the Artic game is absolutely identical to Midway's Pac-Man video game described above. In fact... Artic's Puckman printed circuit board contains an error common to Midway's Pac-Man game." http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3162513435280413...

"In fact... Artic's Puckman printed circuit board contains an error common to Midway's Pac-Man game."

Oh man this brings back memories. The story as I always heard it goes like this: the PCB layout guy at Midway deliberately routed the R/G/B video signal lines in a certain way so that they spelled out his initials on the board: RBG.

Midway used the PCB layout guy as a witness in the Artic trial and asked him "why did you lay the lines out in this order?" and the guy responded that those were his initials. Just a little signature of his design.

Artic was asked the same question and couldn't come up with a valid answer. The judge ruled for Midway shortly after that.

Frogger Clones: Road Frog, Froggy, Anirog Frogrun, Hoppit, Leapfrod, Road Frog, Road Toad…

Donkey Kong Clones: Killer Kong, Krazy Kong, Crazy Kong, Kong, Wally Kong...

I love this stuff.

One more: 2000, Hasbro Interactive vs. anyone who ever made anything remotely similar to the Atari titles they had just purchased (AFAIK it didn't go anywhere):

http://www.ign.com/articles/2000/02/08/hasbro-interactive-su...

Yeah! There were a handful more like this that I wanted to add... but they never really reached a decision in court, so there wasn't much to discuss.

Props to IGN for having an article from 14 years ago still viewable in a reasonable format.

>Video game copyright cases turn on whether the clone copied “functional” elements (tolerated) or “creative” elements (verboten).

Yeah, this quote from the conclusion is not at all what I took from it.

I strongly suspect that, for the most part, the judges here decide based on 'gut feeling' whether a title infringes or not, and then look for justification after the fact.

It also probably matters how litigious the plaintiff is: The Tetris Company is legendary in that regard. I mean, a 10x20 game board is infringing? And how else are you going to arrange four blocks, other than what is already done in Tetris?

I guess if copyright didn't extend effectively forever I would have less of a problem with it, but the idea that a single legal entity is going to own all these ideas when my grandchildren are having children, strikes me as - to put it lightly - very bad for the notion of cultural progress.

> judges here decide based on 'gut feeling' whether a title infringes or not, and then look for justification after the fact.

I think that's a fair assessment of how a lot of court cases are decided, especially where the law involves an imprecise weighing and balancing of several competing factors.

> And how else are you going to arrange four blocks, other than what is already done in Tetris?

Heh. Reading that actually gave me idea. Like this:

  X X
     
  X X

Okay, someone else come up with a falling-block game where the blocks have spaces in between them. :P

Wait, did you just infringe a creative element of Tetris?

As long as the game board is not 10x20 I think he'll be fine :-)

If I do will you sue me?

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