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

[XaeL]

This may be the case (I haven't read the actual licensing agreement contract being referred to), but unless TTC required the third-party developer to assign the relevant copyright to them (which would be extremely surprising), it would still make it impossible for TTC to include a copyright infringement claim on such feature without ownership of the original copyrighted work in which the feature first appeared. The other possible thing TTC could do in their licensing agreement is force any third-party developer to join TTC in a lawsuit with their respective infringement claims (this might be more plausible, but didn't happen in this case).
Actually no, it's not fair game, nobody can 'copyright an idea before they do'. First of all, an 'idea' can't be copyrighted in the first place (see my previous post on idea vs. expression). But more to the point, these days, copyright is automatic and happens the moment an idea is first set down in a fixed work. The US keeps a copyright registration database, but registering a copyright only gives you extra certification that your work was created / published on certain dates. Even without an official copyright registration, if it can be proved that the original work was indeed created/published first, then the latter work loses any claim to originality it might have asserted.

Something interesting about the Tetris copyrights is that Mirrorsoft has a registered US copyright for their 1988 dubiously-licensed "Tetris: The Soviet Challenge" game, with a publication date (1988-01-28) that actually predates Pajitnov's "Tetris v3.12" (1988-09-01) and "Tetris version 2" (1988-02-24) publication dates (The original "Tetris Version 0" and "Tetris version 1" copyright registrations don't have publication dates, though their creation date is listed as 1985.) This means that according to the US copyright office, the earliest published Tetris game actually belongs to Mirrorsoft, not TTC.

are you saying xio lost coz they had sh** lawyers?

Coz i was surprised by a lot of the arguments that they could have brought up but didnt.

[Wojtek]

are you saying xio lost coz they had sh** lawyers?

Coz i was surprised by a lot of the arguments that they could have brought up but didnt.

how do you know what Xio lawyers said? I guess judge verdict document only quote things that support her decision and not things that have not convinced her. This is why Xio sounds so wrong in this document, because point is to show they were wrong. Notice how we don't read much about what Tetris Company said, I guess they are wrong on many things too.

[XaeL]

how do you know what Xio lawyers said? I guess judge verdict document only quote things that support her decision and not things that have not convinced her. This is why Xio sounds so wrong in this document, because point is to show they are wrong. We don't read much about what Tetris Company said, i guess there are also wrong on many things too.

Oh ok

[necrosaro]

how do you know what Xio lawyers said? I guess judge verdict document only quote things that support her decision and not things that have not convinced her. This is why Xio sounds so wrong in this document, because point is to show they were wrong. Notice how we don't read much about what Tetris Company said, I guess they are wrong on many things too.

Xio's defense brief is also public, so you can read what they actually said. Yes, the judge's opinion didn't acknowledge much of their defense, but Xio also focused their brief on the defense that all of Tetris game mechanics are 'functional' and thus uncopyrightable, which allowed the judge to pretty readily decide against them after deciding against that defense. One of the more interesting things I found the defense, however, was that they cited a Parker Brothers puzzle game called Universe, which I hadn't been aware of before this:

[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--]Further consider Parker Brothers’ board game Universe, which has a copyright date of 1967 and has a number of features in common with Tetris- specifically, players rotate and reflect brightly-colored pentominos (whose blocks are individually delineated) and place them on a grid ranging from ten by ten to a larger grid.[/quote]

Pretty interesting. It seems that there are several other pre-Tetris colored-polyomino tile-placement board games that demonstrate similar principles, such as Vagabondo, for example.

[gif]

Hmmm http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html


[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--]
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. Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form.
[/quote]

[Rosti_LFC]

Copyright does not protect the idea for a game...

The 'idea' behind Tetris being "you tessellate blocks and they clear lines when you complete them" - it's well stated in the court case that this alone isn't protected

...its name or title...

They're covered by trademark law (if you register them, which TTC have), not copyright

or the method or methods for playing it

You can hardly copyright "using a keyboard/gamepad", and this was never a point of contention in the Xio case.

Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles.

The key word here being "similar". Not "exactly the same" principles, which is what Mino was judged to be.

But yeah, all of these add up to a general point that if fangame developers put a bit of creativity into the gameplay and interface then as long as they can afford to defend any lawsuit they'd probably be OK. Which has been said before in this thread.

[Wojtek]

...

Mr pretty cool guy, please stop finally, you are making me sick. Somehow this is not how games copyright works outside tetris company. I don't know if you just trolling so hard or what?

[Rosti_LFC]

Somehow this is not how games copyright works outside tetris company.

It totally does work that way outside Tetris. The difference is that most games these days are far more complex and it's far easier to take the basic idea and create something that, while the core gameplay is the same, fundamentally has a different look and feel to it.

Or, alternatively you get games where the concept isn't registered to anyone, so clones are a free-for-all (as is seen with LoL and all the other DotA clones), or where the company which came up with the idea is a fairly small independent venture without the financial ability to sustain a major lawsuit (as is the case for most of the games that Zynga has shamelessly ripped off).

Tetris sits in a fairly unique niche of being one of the few simplistic old-school games that is still being held as intellectual property and is being monetised. Most other games out there are complex enough to allow side-stepping, or are no longer being claimed as IP and are therefore not subject to copyright complaints. And most of the existing lawsuits in this area are from decades ago, where the legal issues around software copyright and software patents weren't so heavily in favour of the original creators.

Regardless of stuff said in this thread, the overlying fact is that the court, what with all its lawyers and judges and whatnot, decided that this is how copyright law works in the US, and until that decision gets overturned I really don't see how a programmer from Poland (who seems to have a penchant for making clones of existing games, and therefore can be said to have considerable bias) can claim to understand the US copyright and surrounding legal system better.

[Wojtek]

i wonder will taito be sued too?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B7jxuznYoo

[zaphod77]

DOn't you mean will taito sue

But seriously, it seems that TTCs strategy is they own everything in any authentic tetris game. It's right in their guideline document. So yeah, it really looks like their strategy is to be able to point at your tetromino game, and be able to say that every part of it is directly ripped from SOME official game.

Also, it seems that there is a very specific reason TGM was made an Authentic Tetris Game, despite failure to follow the Guideline.  Yup, it's because it covers most of the useful deviations from the Guideline.  It was not simply them throwing Japan a bone.   TTC recognizes that it's a good game, and thus wishes to be able to prosecute those who clone it.

Guideline has flat side down. TGM has flat side up.
Guideline has move rest.  TGM has step reset.
Guideline has Cyan i piece. TGM has red I piece.
Guideline has outline ghot. TGM has faded copy ghost.
Guideline has hard drop. TGM has firm drop.
Guideline has SRS. TGM has ARS, which is the most useful rotation system known that doesn't fit it.

I'm not sure Mihara realized what TTC was up to when they made his game Authentic... Note that Mihara is known to respect original tetromino games, such as DTET.  He just doesn't want HIS game being cloned.

[Wojtek]

DOn't you mean will taito sue

no.

[Paradox]

this has to be one of the worst companies ever lol. Sue everyone remotely similar to tetris, copy other game to use as their own.

[caffeine]

TTC has won the final judgement.

[Barneey]

Rest in pieces

[XaeL]

Guideline has flat side down. TGM has flat side up.
Guideline has move rest.  TGM has step reset.
Guideline has Cyan i piece. TGM has red I piece.
Guideline has outline ghot. TGM has faded copy ghost.
Guideline has hard drop. TGM has firm drop.
Guideline has SRS. TGM has ARS, which is the most useful rotation system known that doesn't fit it.

Exactly.

And for block appearances they have everything too.