> Is open sourcing it really all that bad? Your views on the ethics of open source don't really have any bearing on whether this application infringes a copyri

> Is open sourcing it really all that bad? Your views on the ethics of open source don't really have any bearing on whether this application infringes a copyright. > I presume anyone with some skill could recreate such a simple game, and there are tons of copies on the app store. An independent implementation of a similar game engine would presumably be neither technically difficult nor legally problematic. The problem is that, at least according to many of the comments here, he's copying the game assets. From a copyright perspective, independent implementation of the same technology is usually OK (see the Oracle/Google lawsuit, the court ruled that Google's independent implementation of Oracle's API was OK). It's direct copying of code and data that requires permission from the copyright holder, even if it's mixed with your own original work (the case here seems to be direct copying of art mixed with original code). I'm guessing that, from a practical perspective, this whole debate doesn't matter in this particular case, since Google probably doesn't care about this one. They may even have open-sourced the doodle eventually on their own (anyone have information about whether past Google doodles have been open-sourced?) Mandatory disclaimers: 1. IANAL 2. I can only speak for the situation in the USA 3. I haven't personally seen or played the original, I'm basing my opinion of what's copied or not copied on other comments