Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!snorkelwacker!apple!motcsd!dms!rains From: rains@dms.UUCP (Lyle Rains) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Tetris variants Message-ID: <1099@dms.UUCP> Date: 13 Jun 90 23:59:55 GMT References: Organization: Atari Games Inc., Milpitas, CA Lines: 67 As someone within the games industry, I would like to add some other information to this discussion. As several people have pointed out, the copyright laws protect the expression of ideas, rather than the idea itself, but anyone close to a creative work knows the separation between the expression and the idea can be extremely hazy. At one extreme, the designer might argue that the "idea" is to "survive as long as you can and get as many points as you can within a set of rules," and claim that the rules themselves as well as most other aspects of the game are an expression of this basic idea. On the other extreme, a programmer implementing a PD copy of a game may feel justified that the general screen appearance and rules of a game are the idea and only the code is the expression (so as long as the code isn't copied, neither is the game). Although there has not been a large amount of case history in the area of games copyrights, there is enough to indicate that the courts are going to take a view between those extremes. The courts are willing to find that there is intellectual property in a game design beyond the source code. They will accept that the screen graphics are also protectable and that within fuzzy limits, the entire game may be protected as an audio-visual work like a motion picture or television program. And just as in these examples, the point where infringement begins can be quite hazy. If you made a weekly TV soap opera with good guys and bad guys and extra-marital affairs and numerous sub-sub-plots, you could probably be quite safe. But if the series centered around the Texas oil industry and the bad guy was slimely natural gas tycoon nicknamed J.J. who wore a black Stetson, and the show was called "Fort Worth," you'd likely run into problems. In an old case involving a PACMAN(tm)-like game which was sold for the Atari 2600(tm), the court found the the clone did indeed infringe, even though the playfield layout had been somewhat altered and the animated characters had been changed. The court recognized this copy as an attempt to copy the successful audio-visual work of the original PACMAN(tm) even though there was no direct copying of code or screen graphics. So within the industry, we consider a game to be protected by copyrights on its source code, its screen and character graphics, and as an entire audio-visual work. But this is a fairly young area of law, and definitive case law is scarce. It is quite possible that the courts may make new, conflicting decisions in the future which would change the precedent upon which our industry currently depends. Even though the PD copies of games may seem harmless to most readers, the industry has to protect their intellectual property, because if you end up in a jury trial with a commercial copier, and he shows the jury that you have not protected your property from the PD copiers, it can only hurt your case. The law doesn't see the income received by the copier as a basis for infringement (though it may affect the damages awarded to the owner). We regularly suffer from hardware/software/graphics copies of our arcade games which come from Korea, Spain, and occasionally Italy. The ability to invoke our copyrights allows us to work with U.S. Customs and the FBI to help keep flagrant copies out of the United States, but such protection is notoriously hard to come by in Europe. From Fred Fish's earlier postings, it sounded to me like his exchanges with Spectrum Holobyte had been professional, and that he understood their position (whether or not he agreed with it) and was willing to withdraw the PD Tetris' when SH gave him a clear written statement of their position. Such things can rarely be "friendly" since the "hammer" is legal action, but it didn't sound like brutal harassment by a big corporation over a little guy. And I do believe that SH was within their rights, and acted responsibly to object to the PD versions of a product they had licensed and paid for with royalties. -- /* Lyle Rains <-- Any stupid or offensive opinions above are all his. * Atari Games <-- We make arcade video games, not product announcements. * Milpitas, CA <-- OK, so maybe it's not Alviso. But it's home. */