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From: papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Fred Fish & Tetris Clones
Keywords: Tetris,Fred,Fish,Amiga,PD,look,feel,spectrum,holobyte
Message-ID: <24577@usc.edu>
Date: 8 May 90 17:31:45 GMT
References: <5672@sugar.hackercorp.com>
Sender: news@usc.edu
Organization: Felsina Software, Los Angeles, CA
Lines: 37

In article <5672@sugar.hackercorp.com> davidm@sugar.hackercorp.com (David Martin) writes:
>   I have been hearing increasing comments locally about an
>on going problem with Fred Fish and Spectrum Holobyte
>about Tetris. Everyone is aware of the massive Fred Fish
>PD disk collection. He has been doing a wonderful job
>for sometime. I have heard that he is being threatened
>because several of his disks contain programs that have
>the look and feel of Tetris. I think this should concern
>everyone and I hope that Spectrum will leave Fred alone.
>Voice your opinion here and everywhere. Let's protect
>freely distributeable software. It's an important paryt
>of our lives. Some of these PD products are better than 
>the original! Let's keep the PD worldd safe!

Sorry to sound a 'contrarian', but your target has all the rights to
protect its investment (in this instance SO' copyright on Tetris).
As Fred has mentioned, as far as copyrights are concerned it doesn't
matter whether the infringer made any profit out of the infringment. 
If SO has filed for copyrights properly, they can collect triple damages
out of an infringment lawsuit, NO MATTER what was the actual profit, if any,
made by the infringer.

I've seen some of the screen shots of these 'clones'. They indeed look
IDENTICAL to the actual SO's Tetris, and as such likely infringe on the
'visual' copyright (note that the current deposit requirements for
computer games include BOTH source code and/or object + screen shots,
all part of the same filing).

If you are upset at the fact that SO intends to enforce their rights
under current laws, then write your congressman and tell him to change the 
laws.

-- Marco

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"Xerox sues somebody for copying?" -- David Letterman
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