3 ms·

I'm pretty curious about this -- how are clones illegal? Is it via patents or trademarks? If trademark, what if someone renames the clones? If patent, how has i

I'm pretty curious about this -- how are clones illegal? Is it via patents or trademarks? If trademark, what if someone renames the clones? If patent, how has it continued for 30+ yrs? Also, did they get global IP protection on this? If they have indeed managed this, i'm surprised they are not being cited as a case study of "what to do" in business schools and consulting firms!

DivisionSol 7y ago
I was working on a reply and wanted to do some research into verifying some things, but here is an article (there may be better articles out there): https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/06/defining-tetris-how-courts-judge-gaming-clones/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/06/defining-tetris-how-c... But the courts have ruled that making a game with the exact elements (tetronimos, ghost pieces, next-piece, 8x10 rows) infringes copyright. You cannot make a Tetris-clone without saying Tetris, without infringing on those elements. EVEN if you add additional functionality (the game in the article had powerups, etc,)
- anthk 7y ago
  Every BSD except MirBSD has tetris(6) in games.tgz. If tetris(1) get purged I suppose a sudoku clone would fit the gap, or some ncurses Arkanoid clone.
  - cat199 7y ago
    and since we are talking operating systems, also emacs :)
bitwize 7y ago
Copyright. The specifics of Tetris, including the use of tetrominos and the dimensions of the board -- are protected by copyright which The Tetris Company has successfully defended in court. It may suck, but as The Tetris Company and the Blurred Lines ruling have shown, copyrights in the USA are pretty broad. In general, it is a violation of copyright to make a clone of a game; see Atari v. Philips in which the court found that cloning Pac-Man was illegal, despite the cloned game having completely different code, assets, and subtly different mechanics. This is why I believe Oracle v. Google will be ruled in favor of Oracle. In addition, The Tetris Company owns trademarks on the shapes of the tetromino pieces themselves, so even without broad copyright protection, all clones of Tetris would still be illegal.

DivisionSol 7y ago

I was working on a reply and wanted to do some research into verifying some things, but here is an article (there may be better articles out there): https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/06/defining-tetris-how-courts-judge-gaming-clones/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/06/defining-tetris-how-c... But the courts have ruled that making a game with the exact elements (tetronimos, ghost pieces, next-piece, 8x10 rows) infringes copyright. You cannot make a Tetris-clone without saying Tetris, without infringing on those elements. EVEN if you add additional functionality (the game in the article had powerups, etc,)

anthk 7y ago
Every BSD except MirBSD has tetris(6) in games.tgz. If tetris(1) get purged I suppose a sudoku clone would fit the gap, or some ncurses Arkanoid clone.
- cat199 7y ago
  and since we are talking operating systems, also emacs :)

bitwize 7y ago

Copyright. The specifics of Tetris, including the use of tetrominos and the dimensions of the board -- are protected by copyright which The Tetris Company has successfully defended in court. It may suck, but as The Tetris Company and the Blurred Lines ruling have shown, copyrights in the USA are pretty broad. In general, it is a violation of copyright to make a clone of a game; see Atari v. Philips in which the court found that cloning Pac-Man was illegal, despite the cloned game having completely different code, assets, and subtly different mechanics. This is why I believe Oracle v. Google will be ruled in favor of Oracle. In addition, The Tetris Company owns trademarks on the shapes of the tetromino pieces themselves, so even without broad copyright protection, all clones of Tetris would still be illegal.