A sad day for fangame makers: Tetris Holding, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc Options

[caffeine]

This is Mino (for iPhone). It was made by a company called Xio Interactive:



Tetris Holding has successfully sued Xio on the grounds of copyright and trade dress infringement. Tetris Holding has tried this before against omgpop.com's Blockles game, but they settled out of court.

Tetris Holding argues that Mino infringed the following copyrightable elements:

1. Seven Tetrimino playing pieces made up of four equally-sized square
   joined at their sides;
2. The visual delineation of individual blocks that comprise each Tetrimino
   piece and the display of their borders;
3. The bright, distinct colors used for each of the Tetrimino pieces;
4. A tall, rectangular playfield (or matrix), 10 blocks wide and 20 blocks tall;
5. The appearance of Tetriminos moving from the top of the playfield to its
   bottom;
6. The way the Tetrimino pieces appear to move and rotate in the playfield;
7. The small display near the playfield that shows the next playing piece to
   appear in the playfield;
8. The particular starting orientation of the Tetriminos, both at the top of the
   screen and as shown in the “next piece� display;
9. The display of a “shadow� piece beneath the Tetriminos as they fall;
10. The color change when the Tetriminos enter lock-down mode;
11. When a horizontal line fills across the playfield with blocks, the line
    disappears, and the remaining pieces appear to consolidate downward;
12. The appearance of individual blocks automatically filling in the playfield
    from the bottom to the top when the game is over;
13. The display of “garbage lines� with at least one missing block in random
    order; and
14. The screen layout in multiplayer versions with the player’s matrix
    appearing most prominently on the screen and the opponents’ matrixes
    appearing smaller than the player’s matrix and to the side of the player’s
    matrix.

You can read about the case here and here.