Awatmath.2210
net.games.pacman
utzoo!decvax!watmath!bstempleton
Sat Apr 17 22:02:02 1982
Re: ATARI policy towards similar games
I have been told that Atari's attempts to fight copiers have involved
copyrighting the screen image, as well as the pictures of the monsters
and the pacman.  In this way if somebody has a pacman program that draws
something like a pacman maze or a creature that looks like a pacman, they
say - Hey, he stole our copyrighted design of a screen.  This is quite
valid.

Protecting an idea is another study.  The mechanism for that is the patent, and
such things are almost never given for software.