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

[meow]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/06/defi...-gaming-clones/

[Magnanimous]

In defending Mino, lawyers for Xio Interactive didn't deny that they were heavily influenced by Tetris, copying almost all of the game's basic elements wholesale. The defense's main argument, instead, was that the things it copied—everything from the shape and color of the blocks and the way that they rotate to the dimensions of the playfield—were actually integral to the underlying rules of the game, and therefore not subject to copyright protection. The argument, basically, was that Tetris is so simple and abstract that every part of the game is a basic "rule" that can be legally copied.

Yeah... I'm not surprised that they lost. At least now we know what not to do.

I would love to have more (default) variations in field dimensions. 10-wide seems pretty much optimal imo, but playing with other sizes is still fun. Changing the dimensions in-game sounds interesting if it's handled right, and I don't think any TTC game has done that.

[Rosti_LFC]

I don't think TTC would do that - it makes it significantly harder to defend the Tetris brand if you broaden what actually constitutes an official Tetris game.

The main thinking behind the guideline was almost certainly to try and unify for the players what a Tetris game is, but the creation of the guideline also makes it significantly easier to defend games on account of it being a very specific thing. Generally Tetris-y gameplay is hard to defend, but if someone copies the exact specifics of the guideline then it's a far more obvious infringement on intellectual property. Any time they deviate from the guideline they blur what makes an official game.

[zaphod77]

A field twice as high as it is wide is scenes a faire. That much is obvious.

THe width of ten for tetris is actually very important.

A multiple of four makes the game foreverable under memoryless randomiser. Hence, 8 or 12 wide is out.

If you make the field width odd, then you are vulnerable to a run of squares ending the game.

So 9 or 11 is out.

So 10 wide and 20 tall really does appear to be the best.

You can tweak the randomizer to make other field widths playable, but the core game was developed with a memoryless one, and said randomizer influences the design.

AS long as the mechanic of clearing horizontal lines by filling them in, which is a core rule of tetris is used, the seven basic shapes and 90 degree rotation are a requirement to have a game that is playable, but not trivial.

The following things are, in my opinion, expression in a tetris style game.

1) rotation system. 90 degree rotation itself is scenes' a faire, but ARS and SRS are very different. The former is not part of the guideline, and is thus fair game i think. Alterntive rotation systems, such as DRS have also been made.
2) piece colors. You can make them different easily enough, though making them bright and distinctive is scenes a faire.
3) lockdown system. We have move reset, step reset, entry reset, zero lock delay, etc. Move reset is what the guideline demands currently.
4) Number plus exact position of the piece previews. Moving them elsewhere OR changing the number is not a core rule.
5) scoring system. Scoring is not part of the core rules.
6) level system.


Note that TTC themselves has messed around with a lot of these.

The following are pretty much required for an implementation of the core tetris rules to be any good.

10x20 field
use of the seven tetrominos.
90 degree rotation
At least one piece preview
Lock delay (the days of gravity lock are long past, and nothing without lock delay can compete now)

Notably, the TGM series changes enough to be distinct from Guideline Tetris, and should not require a license from TTC. It shows the creativeity and redesign that Xio claims is not needed, yet still contains the seven basic shapes, the same field size, and all the core rules. HOWEVER, the TGM series is also an authentic tetris game, and thus under their protection somehow.

A game that clones neither the guideline, nor tgm should be in the clear, even if it contains only the seven minos.

The impression I got now was they cloned the guideline, and changes some of the colors. And if that's really all they did, then yeah I can see them losing.

[XaeL]

A multiple of four makes the game foreverable under memoryless randomiser. Hence, 8 or 12 wide is out.

plz explain

[Magnanimous]

THe width of ten for tetris is actually very important.

A multiple of four makes the game foreverable under memoryless randomiser. Hence, 8 or 12 wide is out.

If you make the field width odd, then you are vulnerable to a run of squares ending the game.

So 9 or 11 is out.

So 10 wide and 20 tall really does appear to be the best.

lolwat. These are only important if your game lasts millions of pieces... Getting even five squares in a row is super rare with memoryless.

The rest of your post, I agree with.

[necrosaro]

In my (non-legal-professional) opinion, this case was effectively decided by a few quite basic decisions by the judge. First, here is a reminder of the official statement on how copyright applies to games, from the US Copyright Office (my emphasis):

Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, merchandising, or playing a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles.

So the question is: What is this unprotected 'idea for a game' that TTC's "Tetris" embodies, the 'similar principles' that copyright law doesn't prevent others from developing similar games based on? Isn't the idea of the game that TTC's "Tetris" expresses something along the lines of a computer game where you stack a randomly-ordered one-by-one string of the "free tetrominoes" in a vertical rectangular well to form horizontal lines?

Apparently not, said the judge. According to the judge's opinion, the concept of using tetrominoes as game pieces, along with a vertical well, are not part of the general idea for (TTC-brand) Tetris, but rather, form its copyrighted expression. This (in my opinion, overly broad) determination allowed the judge to decide that the unique shape of the (TTC-brand) Tetris pieces and the playfield size are part of its distinctive visual expression, allowing an "ordinary observer" to find "substantial similarity" between (TTC-brand) Tetris and Mino, and thus copyright infringement.

The interesting thing is that there is no evidence or argument behind the judge's decision whether or not to include the set of free tetrominoes or the general shape of the playfield in the 'idea' of TTC-brand Tetris. There was no method cited to determine their inclusion or exclusion, the judge just stated (paraphrase) 'OK guys, I have decided, this is the idea for the game that (TTC-brand) Tetris expresses', leaving no room to scrutinize or argue about the details of what should or should not be the idea.

I expect the process behind the particular determination of this 'idea' to be the main contention of any possible circuit court appeal in this case. If the use of tetromino game pieces was in fact determined to be part of the game's 'idea', I don't think a finding of substantial similarity would have been quite as obvious (because so much of the 'ordinary observer' similarity of the two games at first glance has to do with the shape of the pieces themselves).

There is another contentious point in relation to the 'scenes a faire' concept of the doctrine of merger defense that Xio raised. The judge basically said (paraphrase) "the scenes a faire case law doesn't apply at all here, because Tetris has no relation to the real world and is thus purely fanciful". This statement misinterprets 'fanciful' in the case law to mean 'having no real world representation', where it is actually intended to mean 'more unique and original than a stock or commonplace concept'. This eliminated any consideration of the 'scenes a faire' within commonplace, but non-representational, concepts derived from any existing physical or computer puzzle game genres as having any bearing on this case, which I think was an oversight that we will probably also see Xio argue against in any possible appeal.

[caffeine]

plz explain

See Brzustowski's thesis for an explanation of why it is impossible to play forever in a 10 wide field. It has to do with how, inevitably, the memoryless randomizer will produce a sequence of SZSZSZ pieces. You can't just stack them vertically on top of each other since you'll make an odd number of towers for one piece and an even number for the other. This causes an imbalance which isn't sustainable.

Further Tetris maths show that no matter how you stack them, you'll keep making holes until you die (see the thesis for proof). However, if the field is 8 or 12 columns wide, you'll create an even number of S-towers and an even number of Z-towers. You'll be able to survive this particular death sequence.

[zaphod77]

plz explain

What he said.

and, well i've gotten long strings of squares in a few older tetris games, especially ones that collect entropy during gameplay instead of just power through their LCG one step at a time.

[Wojtek]

Tetris Holding argues that Mino infringed the following copyrightable elements:
...
The display of a "shadow" piece beneath the Tetriminos as they fall;
funny because this game do not even have piece shadow
The color change when the Tetriminos enter lock-down mode
if you look closely you will notice that color do not change, but instead there is little glow around active piece (in judge's language "it is different way to express the idea")
The bright, distinct colors used for each of the Tetrimino pieces;
actually in one of two available modes (that's like half of a game, no?) all pieces are in different shades of blue
The way the Tetrimino pieces appear to move and rotate in the playfield;
(not like there is big problem with this one, but rather to made things clear) this game is not any close to SRS (but it has some kind of wallckicks and guideline like initial orientation)

The interesting thing is that there is no evidence or argument behind the judge's decision whether or not to include the set of free tetrominoes or the general shape of the playfield in the 'idea' of TTC-brand Tetris. There was no method cited to determine their inclusion or exclusion, the judge just stated (paraphrase) 'OK guys, I have decided, this is the idea for the game that (TTC-brand) Tetris expresses', leaving no room to scrutinize or argue about the details of what should or should not be the idea.

This is exactly biggest problem i see in judge's reasoning. since when idea of tetris game do not include use of tetrominos? also this definition clearly comes from nowhere.

I suggest mental excercise. Take list of allegy infinging elsemets. remove items that do not apply to mino (like piece shadow), remove items that judge said are core idea of tetris thus not copyrightable (like clearing complete lines), remove things that are also core idea of tetris just for some wierd reason not in judge's tetris definition (use of tetrominos), remove things that apply to most-if-not-all falling puzzle genre (like display of next piece), remove things that can be only done in limited number of ways and ttc used most or all in diffrent products already (like the visual delineation of individual blocks). what lefts?

copyright trolls will troll over copyright. and Rosti will troll in topics like this.