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Games Entertainment

Hasbro Wins Against Arcade Clones 136

Posted by CmdrTaco from the flap-flap-flap-flap-flap dept.
Masem writes "Hasbro has won a number of settlements in a pending lawsuit with numerous game makers. According to commentary in the newsgroups, most of the games here were "direct" clones of classic arcade games that Hasbro has the rights to, such as Tetris, Pac-Man, and Astroids (Some of these aquired when they bought Atari). "Direct" here being nearly the exact same gameplay, with possibly different titles and graphics, but it's hard to confirm these beyond word of mouth or titles. "
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Hasbro Wins Against Arcade Clones More

Hasbro Wins Against Arcade Clones

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  • They've done this before... (I think) (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I seem to recall a lawsuit Ataari had brought up against Sierra On-Line over Pac-man. Sierra had created a game called "Jawbreaker" which was a rather obvious knock-off of Pac-man. In the end, it was ruled that Atari could not enforce it's copyright over gameplay, however, Sierra was forced to change the graphics and level layouts as part of the ruling. I read that in some book a looong time ago. Wish I could remember where...

  • Look 'n Feel? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Is this the first "look and feel" copyright suit in which the plantiff actually won?

    I'm also a little surprised that Hasbro/Atari is suing people *now*. Not 10-15 years ago when Pacman clones were everywhere, and more importantly, on competing platforms.

    True there are /updated/ versions of the classics, but they all suck. They usually wind-up adding "new" features and destroying the gameplay. (Worst updated game: Lode Runner - why they added ANYTHING to that game is beyond me. They didn't even have a "classic" mode, and worse yet it ran like a dog on a computer 100x faster than my trusty old Apple //+)

    Tom

  • FFS (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This has to be some kind of joke. What's next? ID Software claiming every first person shooter with different weapons is an exact rip-off of Quake?

    And what about the hundreds of cloned games made over the years by public domain and shareware authors?

    You'll have to excuse me, I'm off to write the most general game possible and take everyone else who has ripped off my game to court.

  • Direct (Score:1)

    by mholve ( 1101 )
    I'm talking about direct rip-offs, including graphics and game-play, as well as things like calling parts of the game the same thing. You know, a DIRECT rip-off.

    Not "hmm, they could be similar..."

  • It seems the graphics are different - which isn't so bad. If it's an exact clone - then I can certainly see their issue.
  • I personally feel that these games (as with almost anything this old) should become public domain. We're talking about games that are virtually monuments in gaming circles....no...modern life.


    Raise your hand if you haven't played Tetris or PacMan.

    Raise your hand if you haven't ever programmed your own version of Tetris, PacMan, Asteroids or Space Invaders some time in the 80's ... Was it complex to write? No. Why? Because the design of the came was not very complex in the first place.

  • I thought someone found a copy of it, with the second verse, from a date that makes the entire song in the public domain. Iawm archive [google.com]
  • case closed.

    --
    And Justice for None [geocities.com]
  • If they wrote their own source code, then by definition they created something. This harkens back to the old Apple vs. Microsoft and Lotus vs. Microsoft "Look and Feel" lawsuits of the late '80s and early '90s. BTW: Lotus and Apple lost because the courts determined that a "look and feel" cannot be copyrightable, only the actual source code.

    So, now that the DMCA anti-circumvention measures are in place while UCITA looms we're seeing IP "look and feel" lawsuits winning where only a decade back they would have lost. That Hasbro is updating their old codebase is irrelevant to the issue at hand.
  • We all agree that copying original source or a binary is a copyright violation. So, how is writing one's own variation on a popular game a "rip off"? Is xgalaga a "rip off" of the arcade classic "Galaga"? It doesn't share any codebase with the arcade console. It doesn't share any original graphics; it just looks similar. Is this a direct "rip off" and if not, then how are these other clones "ripping off" Hasbro? If xgalaga IS a rip off of Galaga, then how do you reconcile this opinion with the legal outcoms of the "look and feel" wars between Microsoft, Apple, and Lotus in the late '80s and early '90s?
  • who had the rights to tetris and tries to squash every clone they find.

    but not even they can kill your 'tris clone according to t his page [google.com] (google cache, original won't work) But who knows if whoever wrote that is right.

  • Thought you might want to know. Maybe you were looking for "cellophane", which unlike kleenex or xerox, doesn't have an alternative equivalent in the English language and therefore is no longer Dupont's trademark. It's not enough that a trademark be commonly adopted as a general term -- it also has to be the only term available.
  • I totally agree, these games have been out on the market for years. Hasbro shoudl not be allowed to sue over people doing things with these games. I mean really come on, they are what? 15 - 17 years old.. maybe only 10, but anyway, there are principals which people shoudl abide by. If you were to ask someone who makes Pac-Man, do you think anyone could tell you? Probably not, it's kind of like if the person who wrote HAPPY BIRTHDAY suddenly started sueing everyone who was singing it for copyright infringment!!
  • You can't really 'win' a settlement, you just get it. It means the other person gives up. This dosn't have any barring on future cases like this.
  • The linked article doesn't mention Pac-Man and I thought Namco owned it?

    -jfedor
  • They haven't released them in any way that I can see...


    Then you aren't looking hard enough. I was down at a local book/video/software store yesterday and saw an Atari Arcade pack for windows. Had Asteroids, Centipede, Tempest, Pong, Breakout and something else that I can't remember.
  • Actually, it was Lotus v. Borland, and Lotus won the battle. (Quattro Pro had to be modified to remove the Lotus menu structure, copies of Quattro Pro were pulled from the shelves, and Borland is now a shell of its former self (of course this happened when they stopped concentrating on their great compilers, but I digress.)). The decision was later overturned on appeal (thank Bob), but too late for Quattro Pro.

    Fair enough--they may not have copied the code for the games, but they've still just made second rate clones trading on the familiarity of the classics. IMO, Hasbro could have used their efforts making games, rather than bothering with what was likely a near-zero dent in their corporate wallet.

    This should probably be addressed with trademark law rather than copyright law, but (here it comes) IANAL.
  • If only that were true. However, that only works with trademarks. (IANAL, yadda yadda yadda.)
  • Nope, they'll be paying multi-million dollar judgements to Nintendo and Sega for appropriating the idea of horizontal scrolling games in the Commander Keen series :>.
  • Thanks--that's in the post :> (last sentence, first paragraph) except for the lost the war part).
  • Whether they're improvements or not is a matter of opinion, but Hasbro has released updates of Pong, Battlezone, Asteroids, Missile Command, and others.

    The people making the knockoffs were probably just small-time profiteers that didn't create anything--slime that are best driven out of business anyway.
  • I was involved in a game that has been severely affected by this lawsuit.

    Not directly mentioned, but it has completely made sales my our title impossible.

    That said, I think your missing the broader picture. VERY VERY few of the games in question where direct rip-offs, but rather extensions of the originals. Theres a very hard question tied up in this, "What constitutes a 'rip-off'"?

    The measurement is very hard. Is simply replacing the graphics enough? Clearly the inclusion of a particle physics system changes the game in some way. While the game is still similiar, it's not exactly the same. At what point do we cross this line?

    Compare unreal to quake, for example. Is it fair to call Unreal a 'rip-off' of quake? Is it a derivative work? Are they completely unrelated?

    My point is, that the line is nearly impossible to draw accurately. Derivative works are very important. The ability for anyone to improve on a basic concept is important.

    Lets apply this to another genre, the Web. What if I take a webpage design (we'll use slashdot as an example), and change the design a bit..add some functionality. Am I slashdot ripoff because I started with their site? Or have I IMPROVED on the Slashdot design enough to make it my own?

    Hard question to answer, and this settlement seems to lend credence to the idea that a company can own broad sweeping copyrights on entire models of gameplay, not specific games. That's dangerous, and not something to be taken lightly.
  • If the company making the derivative work did so without ever seeing or copying Hasbro's code, then it should be legal. This is not something that should be enforced by copyright. This seems more like a patent issue. It's extremely ridiculous by any standard though. almost as bad as "business model patents."

    You may wish that was the case, but this issue was decided something like 15 years ago in various "look and feel" decisions. No common code is required for something to be considered a derivative work, and infringing under the copyright law.

  • Same with a game. If you use the maze idea from PacMan and name it something else and make the ghosts skeletons and the power pills pumpkins, you're OK. But changing just one feature gets you a "cease and desist" pretty quick.

    A court would have to decide how significant the changes were. Actually, the changes you describe probably wouldn't be enough--they are pretty much the sort of thing done for the game "Jawbreaker," which was ruled to infringe on Pac-Man.

  • DeCSS,Riaa,Mpaa,emulators,Lars,domain jumpers,copyright laws,any number of the silly laws with the words "software" or "communications" in them,Al Gores Internet,Janet Reno and her merry fascists,Clintons Clowns,Ive had it!
    I would literally be easier to LINE UP ALL THE LAWYERS(judges too)AND MARCH THEM INTO THE OCEAN.
    The People demand SLACK and we're GONNA TAKE IT!REMEMBER ITS STILL ABOUT US!NOT GOVERNMENTS!NOT CORPORATIONS!US!THERES MORE OF US THAN THEM!'course they can still hang out if they dont make any trouble,BUT ITS TIME SOMEONE GOT A DEEP BEATING!

  • If I got a hard copy,its mine to use misuse and abuse.I signed no agreements and saw no agreements.
    Even if they add them,what i own now is grandfathered.What they gonna do?spank me?
    Funny thing about intangible goods,you cant hang solid laws on them,not to mention being bad for economy.If the industries want to waste all their money chasing individuals let them.they'll soon be gone and make way for new ideas.The old ones dont work and make criminals of all.
    If things were to work as in your dreamworld,then things must change,it is the evolutionary path.

    Lawyers like you pay me to let them touch the mighty staff.

  • ITS STILL ABOUT US!
    We pay for content once.You're such a buttlicker why don't you just give them all your money.
    When the device breaks we use an emulator
    When vinyl,8TRACK,cassette are scratched broken mutilated by design we Mp3 it.
    SURPRISE SHITHEAD WE ALREADY BOUGHT IT!
    When the terms of the suppliers are too stiff,
    those who demand will get it anyway,DESPITE LAWS,DESPITE LAWYERS AND IN SPITE OF THE GREED OF THE "OWNERS".This has been seen again and again
    Pinkboy.IN THIS CASE THE MOUNTAIN DOESNT COME TO MOHAMMED.THE WORLD WORKS DIFFERENTLY THAN THE POWERS THAT BE WANT IT TO.No one rational ever promised a bottomless income to artists,coders or corporations.Coding and music are a lot alike,both best done for the love and sake of it.When done "for the money"the product is usually shit anyway.(behold microsoft or any disco album)

    Read 3-fisted Tales of Bob,think Subgenius,kiss my ass.

    Oh and by the way,lawyers like you beat me off every day.Nyahhh Nyahhhh.Tee hee.

  • Myself, I always thought of Diablo as being a blend between Rouge/NetHack and Gauntlet.

    Now, I realise you were being flippant, but it is fairly obviously the case that there was a pretty large chunk of innovation that went into making Diablo different from its influences. It's certainly worlds away from copying Pac-Man verbatim and merely changing the name of the protagonist.

    How exactly are computer games any different from other IP? No-one ever seems to think that it's unfair for song-writers to get royalities when other bands do cover versions of their work. It's an analogous situation here.

  • Assuming, of course, that running Linux means owning an x86.

    -Pete

  • It's lucky for you a post can't be moderated as Too Fucking Hard To Read.
    Ever heard of paragraphs?

    -Pete

  • I'm not sure on the others, but on Angband, the currect copyright is:

    Copyright (c) 1997 Ben Harrison, James E. Wilson, Robert A. Koeneke

    This software may be copied and distributed for educational, research,
    and not for profit purposes provided that this copyright and statement
    are included in all such copies. Other copyrights may also apply.

    The license isn't open source, as open source's popularity wasn't widespread when it came out, but it is effectively so, since you can get the code for almost any version of it easily. The current maintainer is also in process of trying to get the licence switched to a dual license with GPL, and wants as many people who've contributed to Angband's code over the years as possible to e-mail him giving permission.

    If you've contributed any code to Angband, you might check at
    http://thangorodrim.angband.org/ope nsource.html [angband.org]
  • ...and Capcom would later sue DataEast for their SF2 ripoff Fighter's History. Fighter's History was a fairly lame ripoff (I played it once in a pizza place just to see if it was as bad as it was made out to be... it was); pretty sure Capcom won that one.
  • The companies in question settled. No court ruled in Hasbro's favor, no precedent was set.

  • There's still a bit of money to be made off these games and Hasbro, according to the courts, has the exclusive right to do so.

    Not necessarily. The companies settled, so there's no way to know whether the courts would have ruled in Hasbro's favor.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • By my understanding, it works as follows. Its a derivative work if I take the code for the game and modify it. If, however, I just like the gameplay and build something similar, its not necessarily a derived work... I'm afraid I'm not incredibly clear on this. For example, most fanfic is a derived work, but a piece of fiction set in a similar universe wouldn't be.


    -RickHunter

  • Indeed if this didn't happen the entire music industry would probably fall apart...

    Well, yeah. How long has it been since you heard an original song? ;-) But seriously, it wouldn't be a problem for the RIAA. They can probably use their contracts to wrench permission out of their artists. And I suspect they would just roll over any independant artist who objected.


    -RickHunter

  • Actually, it seems to stem from an almost global lack of understanding of the ideas behind copyright. A work inspired by a copyrighted work (not directly modified from, that's a derivative work) is fine. If I were a composer and heard a catchy musical sequence, I could build a variation on it into my next song. But it looks to me like now too many people are buying the "Intellectual Property" arguments. Copyright does not inherently equal ownership. It is just what the name says. Copying rights.

    Perhaps if we get the Greeks/Hebrews to sue the American government for "imitating" the form of government invented by their ancestors, we'll see some clueing-in? ;-)


    -RickHunter
  • 1. Spin around
    2. Shoot stuff
    3. Don't get killed

    And

    4. Pay up.

  • OK, I'm a bit puzzled... exactly which part of copyright does this fall under? They are certainly not "unauthorized duplication" (exact copy of binary), "reverse engineering" (figuring out how the code works), or "deriving" (since none of the original work (code / art) beyond the idea has been used in creation).

    I thought it was established in a case of Atari vs. Sierra On-Line in the 80s regarding Pac-Man and Jawbreaker - where Jawbreaker was the same "idea" and gameplay, but the maze and graphics were altered - that ideas are not copyrightable.

    Given the simlicity of most "classic" games, claiming owner ship of the idea of shooting rocks that break apart just doesn't sit well with me. Where is the line? If I'm admittedly using another work as a "frame of reference," at what point am I infringing on their copyright, and at what point am I off the hook?
  • Are ideas copyrightable? I was under the impression that they were not.

    Creations are protected under copyright. Ideas are protected under patents.

    Copying a song is also fundamentally different from imitating a computer game. Music can be broken down into a set of simple instructions (musical notes) which can then be used to replicate the music. If you use essentially the same notes in your own song, you've copied the song.

    Computer programmers don't work like that. There is a set of instructions that tell the computer what to do. When someone clones a game, they create an entirely different set of computer instructions that do not even vaguely resemble the original. This is the part that companies copyright, and if this part has not been duplicated, then I don't see where the violation is.

    The music example is an intiguing one. If I have a song represented as a bunch of notes, I can remove sections, move sections around, move a section up or down by a series of semitones, and still be in violation of copyright. But, if I move each note independently, I can convert any song into any other song. So, by the court's logic, the creator of the first song holds the copyright on every derived work.

    Who the hell invented Rap or Techno? They must still be alive, I want to buy their rights (I think I have a dollar around here somewhere...) and sue the ass off everyone currently violating their "idea."
  • Just had another thought:

    Isn't the recent PC release of Asteroids more a rip off of Astro-3D than Astro-3D is of the original arcade Asteroids?

    Who should be suing who here?
  • Suppose the game added a few new features (such as Pac Man being able to pass through walls). I feel that these changes would make for a different gaming experience, and would warrant a separate copyright for the new idea. If the style of play hasn't changed, then credit should be given to the original copyright holder for the use of the original idea (for freeware or open source projects), or licenses to use the original idea should be purchased (shareware or commercial software, GPL or no GPL).
  • The old "open source" games that you use as examples have their roots in real-world games. Heck, almost all computer games are just adaptations of games that previously existed in r/l.

    The precursor to Nethack - d&d.

    The precursor to the unspecified "multiplayer conquest game" - Diplomacy

    mazewar - paintball (a bit of a stretch, but pretty close)

    So let me rephrase a paragraph or two of yours:
    So, it seems to me that open source game programmer collectives are making non-proprietary games out of proprietary, often copyrighted, games. They add a bit of graphics, modify the gameplay somewhat (often dumbing it down due to hardware limitations), and do a pretty crappy job at packaging. When the original inventor of a game does that, I don't have a problem with it, but most of these collectives are generations away from the original inventors

    Should they get the kind of protection from prosecution that open source hubris provides? I think not. Their slick, non-commercial implementation of copyrighted ideas deserves prompt legal action. In the give-and-take of ideas between proprietary and non-proprietary games, IMO, open source programming collectives have been doing a lot more taking than giving.

    That's an entirely sarcastic passage, btw. But my point is, the open source people draw just as much inspiration from the world around them as the commercial "evils" that surround them.

    -- kwashiorkor --
    Leaps in Logic
    should not be confused with

  • Too many pranksters were changing the first letter of the name "Puck-Man" on the cabinet. "Pac-Man" sounds a lot nicer than "Fuck-Man," don't you think?
    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
  • Namco licenses Pac-Man® from Hasbro. But that doesn't stop you from making "Janitor" in which you are a vacuum and are picking up paper wads (that look like white dots on your low-res screen). Or does it?
    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
  • Happy Birthday is still copyrighted [straightdope.com] and generates royalties of $1 million [cni.org] per year.
    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]

  • Is xgalaga a "rip off" of the arcade classic "Galaga"?

    Yes (Galaga is a trademark) but a quick `mv' can change that.


    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
  • ...but lost the war on appeal [mit.edu].
    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
  • Only trademarks must be enforced to survive. Your legal term "abandonment of copyright" means "releasing into the public domain" which requires an action on the copyright holder's part.
    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
  • I wrote up a piece [8m.com] on the Sonny Bono Copyright Theft Act.
    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
  • ...the people get slack [slackware.com].
    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]

  • The rest of the world manages to create new content everyday without ripping off other peoples ideas.

    Does Puff Daddy create original content?


    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
  • A few months ago they released an emulator/classic arcade CD-Rom. I saw it for sale at CompUSA. There's still a bit of money to be made off these games and Hasbro, according to the courts, has the exclusive right to do so.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • Hey! (Score:2)

    by Danse ( 1026 )

    Maybe that's why Clinton backed off from the National Missile Defense System. They were afraid that Hasbro would sue them for infringing on Missile Command!

  • Right (Score:2)

    by Danse ( 1026 )

    If the company making the derivative work did so without ever seeing or copying Hasbro's code, then it should be legal. This is not something that should be enforced by copyright. This seems more like a patent issue. It's extremely ridiculous by any standard though. This is almost as bad as "business model patents."

  • DeCSS wouldn't have come about so easily if the author didn't study the encryption mechanisms in Xing's player. That's not nothing.

    Otherwise, I agree. It sounds like the ability to destroy another company for using some fundamental concept (such as scrolling left to right, using cascading menus, shooting falling objects from a stationary target, editing text with a keyboard, arrow keys and pgup/pgdn and soforth) is directly proportional to the size of their legal department.

    These Hasbro clones on the other hand used the Hasbro games and the strong similarities of the name of the Hasbro games to market their products. If Tetris were called "Blocks" I could understand the re-use. Microsoft certainly couldn't sue for people using the word "Word" in the name of their wordprocessor (which is MS Word compatible, and edits text...with a keyboard, menus, dictionary, etcetera).

    There has to be a line somewhere... There is a company which owns the use of the word "Ethical" in the context of Mutual funds. Whenever a company creates an "Ethical" fund and calls it "Ethical" the legal department is engaged. On the other hand, their own funds need not necessarily be "Ethical".

    I suppose my point is that it is just as dumb and confused outside the computer industry as it is inside.

    Yes, I'm babbling.

  • As only a couple other people have pointed out, this really doesn't change much.

    IANAL but...

    You can't copyright the rules to a game; thus, anyone can make a game in which a user-controlled sprite runs through a maze, eliminating neutral sprites which it overlaps, and pursued by hostile sprites. Rules can be patented, but they never were, and I think that it would be too late to decide to do so twenty years after the things were released.

    Additionally, you can't copyright the name - that's a trademark issue. And the trademark on some of these games is probably pretty worn out by now; who can really tell the difference between anything in the gigantic Space Invaders genre? It's a generic term now, like kleenex or xerox.

    Finally, there's no legal precedent that was set; the companies settled because they didn't want to persue a lawsuit. But I think they'd've had a strong chance of winning if they had.
  • Well, Apple once claimed that all GUIs were direct rip-offs of the Macintosh interface, but they weren't too sucessful with that... How is this different?
  • I would be curious to know where Hasbro actually got the rights to Asteroids. Asteroids seems awfully close to MIT's Spacewar.

    Then you haven't seen Atari's first game, Computer Space. Check out this picture [cgexpo.com] of the very first (and very mod) arcade game. If the ugly word "rip-off" has to be used, CS is near the front of the rip-off line -- it's Spacewar for the arcade.

    However, in an era where games quite freely, er, "shared" elements, Asteroids was rather novel at the time. I would certainly say that the gameplay, independent of the fact that it was a space game, was a revelation (of course, Robotron later took that gameplay to a new level). Check out the articl e [gamearchive.com] about Asteroids from Microsoft Arcade.

  • The situation is not at all symmetric: there is a big difference between people adapting and improving games non-commercially and a company claiming proprietary rights to them.

    You seem to find nothing surprising about the notion that games can be owned by a corporation. Well, that's actually a rather new-fangled idea. For thousands of years, games have been non-proprietary. People experimented with them, tweaked the rules, and improved the game play. That's why games like chess, checkers, and go now are so exquisitely balanced and playable. Games are, in a sense, the original open source application. And the high quality game play of games like Nethack (unmatched by Diablo or other commercial games, IMO) are recent examples.

    Games are an important part of our cultural heritage. They seem closer to language than to inventions. The idea that they should be protected by patents (which, for practical purposes, don't seem to expire for games) to me is very much something that can be challenged.

    As an aside, the arrival of computers created an entirely new genre of games: large scale simulation games (war games, economic games, etc). Those simply weren't feasible before, and there were genuine pioneers in that area that were at best inspired. And, no, Diplomacy isn't a real precursor to those games.

  • Looks like they were just going after companies... I highly doubt any emulators would be targeted, since they're not ripping off someone elses games... they're just allowing it to be executed on a different platform.
  • So let me get this straight.

    Some games companies are taking the orginal idea of something and improving on the outdated games that haven't been touched for years.

    The current owner of the "original games" sues the creators of the new games. To get a shitload of cash.

    Hasbro won't be releasing any new improvements on the old classics.

    Damn, that's a good business model.

    Money for nothing.

    I bet they are trying deperately to find some similarities between other old classics that they aquired (shit, they didn't even develop these games themselves) and quake 3...

  • I was under the impression that Namco owned Pac-man...

    Namco owns the rights to the Pac-man arcade game, which they wrote.

    Atari owned the rights to home versions of the game until they were bought by Hasbro a couple of years ago.

  • The beautiful [emuunlim.com] Pac-Man clone for ZX Spectrum from the year 1982?

    I wonder if they'll sue for that too. :)

    -jfedor
  • I saw some of those games, and in the ones I didn't, the title alone made it obvious that they were direct ripoffs. I have to side with Hasbro on this one.
    If I understand correctly, all of these games are original works. That is, they don't share any source code with the "original" games, and they don't violate any trademarked images or titles.

    This is a VERY bad precedent. It's not much of a stretch from writing a clone of a game, to writing a clone of ANY program!

    Thankfully, this appears to have been a settlement and therefore does not set a legal precedent. Also, I think there are actually contrary legal precedents (Apply trying to sue Microsoft over the original Windows interface). I would guess that these little game companies gave in simply because they didn't have the money to fight the suit.

  • I personally feel that these games (as with almost anything this old) should become public domain.

    The problem is that the length of copyright has been going up and up.
  • Actually, it seems to stem from an almost global lack of understanding of the ideas behind copyright. A work inspired by a copyrighted work (not directly modified from, that's a derivative work) is fine.

    Except in places like the USA where there have been fairly draconian laws against creating "derived works" for some time.

    If I were a composer and heard a catchy musical sequence, I could build a variation on it into my next song.

    Indeed if this didn't happen the entire music industry would probably fall apart...
  • What if I took a riff from the song ?Under Pressure? by Queen and David Bowie and sang new words to it, like ?Ice, ice, baby?? Would that be copyright infringement? No, it?s fair use, a small snippet of a melody used as part of a larger whole.

    But what would happen if you took a sample of lyrics, pretended someone else was singing them, oh and pretended to change a "right" to a "ride".
  • From mvpsoft...

    , 256-color graphics, explosive digitized sound, and a sizzling original musical score add up to make this the best Desert Storm arcade game of them all! Dump the sand out of your boots, strap on your helmet and let's go! Requires 286+, VGA,

    Talk about retro!
  • The games in question were blatant rip-offs to the point where the authors should be completely embarrassed at their lack of original thinking. If you really liked Asteroids, you could start with the Asteroids gameplay, but go off in a different direction. How about helicopters that broke into parts (debris) when shot? Maybe the cargo could come out too, and you can collect it by running over it (say, pieces of mail or packages or suitcases). Or you could do the reverse and have lots of little piece of, say, plutonium, floating around, and if the collide they combine into something more dangerous. Or you could involve different materials, and they react in different ways when they collide: sometimes they create bonus objects, sometimes they create an extra-strong bad guy, sometimes they explode and damage everything within a 5 meter radius. All of these ideas start with Asteroids, but the rapidly change direction. As the designs are fleshed out, they become further and further from Atari's game. In fact, this isn't cloning at all, but starting with a germ of an idea and running with it. This is called "game design."

    Contrast this to what some people did that upset Hasbro. They wrote Asteroids, added a few powerups, spiffed up the graphics, and released it with a name like "Asteroid Attack." Or they added ray-traced graphics to Missile Command and released it as "Incoming Missiles!" Now, really, what do you expect here? "Hey, I just wrote a book about a boy wizard named Larry Kotter, and can you _believe_ that some people think I'm ripping off those books by Rowling? She's such a bitch, trying to say I can't do this." Would anyone think this person was anything less than a complete fool?
  • That said, I think your missing the broader picture. VERY VERY few of the games in question where direct rip-offs, but rather extensions of the originals. Theres a very hard question tied up in this, "What constitutes a 'rip-off'"?

    They're fundamentally rip-offs. If you copy the Asteroids design and add a few tidbits, that's hardly reason to claim you're doing something else. And calling the result "Asteroid Shooter" is pretty damn stupid no matter how you look at it.

    The bottom line here is that you can't just take someone else's game design, tack on a few things, and claim it as your own. Even if that were legally allowed, it's very questionable artistically. It doesn't take much thought to start with an old game concept and spin it into something very different. Just adding powerups and better graphics shows an embarrassing lack of game design skills.
  • Hasbro won't be releasing any new improvements on the old classics.

    But they *are*, and it has been quite a successful product line, too.
  • I never did any of these, but I did write TRS-80 versions of breakout, karate champ, and yie-ar kung fu.

    Breakout was especially simple. I wrote it in just a few hours. I was ten years old at the time. And the version I wrote had some cool features that the original lacked.

    Karate champ and yie-ar were a little more complicated, but still nothing that would take more than a couple of days to write.

    I agree that trivial games like these should be public domain. Both the gameplay and how to make it work on a computer are not that complicated.

  • I'm talking about direct rip-offs, including graphics

    Does, for example, the csh/bash commandline in GNU look any different from the csh/bash commandline in UNIX?

    and game-play

    The bash syntax is the same as the sh syntax, or at least as similar as the game clones were to the Hasbro originals. And the POSIX functions are the same too.

    as well as things like calling parts of the game the same thing.

    ls, cd, rm, etc. are exactly as they are in UNIX®.

    You know, a DIRECT rip-off.

    A direct rip-off of UNIX was RMS's goal when he started the GNU project [gnu.org] and the Free Software Foundation:

    I chose to make the system compatible with Unix so that it would be portable, and so that Unix users could easily switch to it. The name GNU was chosen following a hacker tradition, as a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix."

    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
  • Wasn't the Lotus v. Borland case reversed on appeal? [mit.edu] See also Tetris Under Fire [geocities.com].
    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
  • Every known NES ROM can be found at Tobbe's [tobbeo.com].
    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]

  • other companies said "woah, good idea" lotus tried to sue them for incorperating "lotus-like menus". Fortunatly Lotus lost, or the suit was dropped or something. (I forget which)

    Lotus won, but it was overturned [mit.edu].


    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]

  • One other question...what kind of precidence does this set for a game like Arkanoid? I know there are litteraly hundreds of clones like Breakout and SuperBreakout on the market.

    Breakout was an Atari (now Hasbro) game before Arkanoid, even before arcade games ran on general-purpose 8-bit microprocessors (Taito's Space Invaders was one of the first). Arkanoid (adding very nice graphics and loads of powerups) was from Taito.


    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
  • The difference is Leonardo Da Vinci was copyrighted before perpetual copyright [8m.com], while Hasbro's works were copyrighted after perpetual copyright, which started on January 1, 1923.
    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
  • "If you want to play our games on OS/2 or Linux, please purchase and install Microsoft Windows Me and reboot your computer when you want to play our games."
    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]

  • TETRIS® is a registered trademark [8m.com] of The Tetris Company LLC. (There was a /. story on this.) [slashdot.org] Hasbro, as a TETRIS® licensee, is doing what it's contractually obligated to do: defend the TETRIS® trademark.

    So download freepuzzlearena [8m.com], a clone of Tetris for Linux, DOS, and Windows 9x.


    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]

  • Pinocchio's rant on The Tetris Company has moved here [8m.com].

    Now, answering your question: Hasbro is a Tetris Company licensee.


    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
  • does this include versions of games developed for platforms that never had the "original" such as an(for example) asteroids clone for OS/2?
  • I'm sick and tired of all the knockoffs in the clothing industry too. I mean, look at it, guys in America only seem to wear one of three things to cover their lower extremities: pants, shorts, and jeans. These clothing items are getting way too old. I think it is time that Levi's sued every company that makes jeans so we can get on with our clothing life and come up with something new. I mean, why _shouldn't_ we all be wearing MooMoos or Saris? The people in other countries do it without problem, and to the best of my knowledge a Sari is a semi-religious piece of clothing, so there should be absolutedly NO copyright infringement there.

    It's about time that the jeans knock-off companies who add more pockets or new colours paid Levi's for licensing their original idea, just like games.

    And, to further that matter, I also think that all pants manufacturers should be paying their royalties to the Amish (or whoever invented pants).

    Maybe the entire idea of clothes is outdated and we need something new. Perhaps a nudist law allowing people to only wear new items as "clothing"? I think there should be no problem whatsoever with people walking naked on the streets. I mean, it takes time to come up with a new clothing idea, and once it's been in the market for a few years and the person no longer manufactures it, you have to think up a new one, right? And while you're waiting you're not gonna have anything to wear.

    And to ensure that all the items you wear as "clothing" are original or are royalty-paid knockoffs, the government should force you to scan the DMCA approved encrypted barcode on the pocket of the clothing item with a :Cue:Cat before they can be legally worn, just in case. ;-)
  • I would have to disagree with Habro on this one. Just looking at the case, it looks like a case of piracy and copyright issues....but I think that these games are so old and so well known that hasbro is not losing any money off of them. Everybody knows what pacman is and can tell a ripoff when they see it, but really...these games have been around for years, and hasbro is not going to be able to sell them. Personally, these "ripoffs" are just people having fun. Hopefully, no self respecting person would actually pay money for a copy of pacman or asteroids......if anyone is looking for a fresh copy of pacman...I have that and a bridge to see you.


  • Copyright on games (of all sorts) is a bit funny. Basically, sets of rules for games can be copyrighted, and the name of the game is to decide whether a clone has copied substantially all of the "rules" of a video game. Unsurprisingly, the only real specialists in this arcane area of copyright work for games companies, which is why it's best not to litigate against them.
  • I have obviously not wasted money in an arcade recently :) I do not really recognize most of the titles under the court order:
    3D Astro Blaster, Astro-3D, Debris, Debris 32, Intergalactic Exterminator, 3D Bug Attack, Missile Launch, Missile 2000, 3D TetriMadness, TetriMania,TetriMania Master, 3D TetriMania, XTRIS, Trix, Smart Boxes, Columns Millennium, 3D Geo Mania, 3D Maze Man, 3D Chomper, Maniac Maze, 3D Frog Man, 3D Ms. Maze, 3D Munch Man, 3D Munch Man II, 3D Crunch Man, Tunnel Blaster, and UnderWorld.
    although they are obviously similar to games that we all know and love.

    It reminds me of going into an un-named store and seeing a knock off of a Sony(tm) boom-bax named Sonic. The packaging was completely identical to Sony packaging, except for the name.

    now in an arcade, players are less concerned about such details, since if the games plays well, who cares? It is the owner of the game who paid out the big bucks.

    Another example of "which way do you want to go in trademark/copyright law?" .......

    - - - - - - - -
    "Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."

  • "Monopoly" history links (Score:3)

    by jetson123 ( 13128 ) on Sunday September 10, 2000 @11:53PM (#790880)
    You may find the following links interesting; they point to a history of the monopoly game, another game that started out pretty much in the public domain and then was captured by a big corporation:

  • They've done it to other games, too (Score:3)

    by PurpleBob ( 63566 ) on Sunday September 10, 2000 @11:14AM (#790881)
    Online Scrabble clubs have been driven underground, because of Hasbro. According to Hasbro, if you play Scrabble online without using their (expensive, Windows 9x only, graphically bloated, slow) version of the game, you're breaking the law. So now what happens is that the freeware Scrabble program (I won't mention the name in case any suits from Hasbro are reading this) can't be put up on a web site for long; it has to be passed along between people by DCC or something of the sort. Along the way, people have decided to not bother sending all the files, so it's lost some features such as support for multiple languages.

    The way the newest version of the Scrabble program attempts to be legal, incidentally, is that you can switch configuration files that control how the game acts. By default, it plays this almost-Scrabble game with certain changes, such as 8 tiles on your rack, squares where you can't play, 4x Word Scores in hard-to-reach places, different square colors, etc. It just so happens that it's distributed with a different configuration file that makes it act like normal Scrabble.

    Hasbro's control extends to other good games, too, such as Boggle and Monopoly. Again, if you're going to play them on a computer legally, you have to use the bloated Win9x games. This makes things like bsdgames/boggle (which comes with Debian) illegal. (Hey look, a legal issue you can worry about after KDE.)

    I despise what Hasbro is doing to these games. I think about any game that I like to play and there's a 50/50 chance that Hasbro has bought the rights to it. There's something wrong with having a monopoly on fun.
    --
    No more e-mail address game - see my user info. Time for revenge.

  • Can ya really blame Linus, ESR, and RMS? (Score:3)

    by yerricde ( 125198 ) on Sunday September 10, 2000 @05:38AM (#790882) Homepage Journal
    By your logic, if the GNU [gnu.org]/Linux [linux.com]® System is a direct rip-off of the UNIX® System [unix-systems.org], then it's no better than piracy...
    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]

  • Nothing New (Score:3)

    by MrBogus ( 173033 ) on Sunday September 10, 2000 @08:20AM (#790883)
    Long ago, in the deep dark history of video gaming, there was a company called Atari. Atari not only popularized the idea of video games in the US, they also invented many of the classic games (such as Asteroids) which are apparently still being played to day. Other popular arcade games that they did not invent (such as PacMan), they spent substantial money purchasing the console and computer rights for.

    After many years, Atari was nothing more than a shell of itself. It didn't create video games anymore, it didn't do anything. But it did have this enormous copyright and patent portfolio that they had spent millions building up in the glory years. So, they went about licencing their games and suing companies that had infringed on their early patents. Atari became a "intellectual property" concern, that's all.

    Now, when Tramiel finally gave up on video games, he went looking for a buyer, and found Hasbro. Hasbro paid a piddling $3 Million for all of Atari's intellectual property. Only $3 Million! for the rights to produce the most recognizable video games of all time. (The gamers of the world should have started a fund to buy this stuff and put it in the public domain.)

    Hasbro got a deal, but to capitalize on it, they now have to play the same intellectual property games were playing. So, this sort of this thing is not any different than what Atari was doing in the early 80's (when they sued Maganavox for a PacMan clone on the Odessey II) or the early 90's (when they licened games to Microsoft), or the mid 90's (when Atari tried "3D" rehashes of classic games on the Jaguar).

    All of this well enough known that it shouldn't be a problem. Activision came out with a Frogger clone called "Chicken" and never got sued. Likewise with dozens of sorta-close-to-PacMan games. These games still do have value: The local CompUSA has two or three "game packs" with clones of old games for sale for $15. Plus MAME is still a very popular use of people's time. The problem is that you *still* either need to pay off Hasbro/Atari, or make a different damn game.

  • Check out the Offenders (Score:3)

    by 64.28.67.48 ( 217783 ) on Sunday September 10, 2000 @05:43AM (#790884)
    Download 'em (while you can) and decide for yourself:
    http://www.mvpsoft.com/soft-arcade.html [mvpsoft.com]
    http://www.webfootgames.com/newindex.html [webfootgames.com]
    http://www.egames.com/_asp/ egames.asp?nav=home&con=home [egames.com]

    ---------
    The truth is out th - oh, wait, here it is...

    -------------

  • game companies are ripping off free games (Score:4)

    by jetson123 ( 13128 ) on Sunday September 10, 2000 @08:56AM (#790885)
    I would be curious to know where Hasbro actually got the rights to Asteroids. Asteroids seems awfully close to MIT's Spacewar. And it seems that many other companies got or are getting their basic gameplay ideas from open source efforts and non-proprietary games. Diablo is basically rogue/hack with real-time and nice graphics. Alpha Centauri and Civilization are variations on a number of old multiplayer conquest games. The various space conquest games are based on a number of single and multiplayer "Trek" games for UNIX (imagine using that name in the trademark obsessed 00's). Wolfenstein 3D and others have precursors in Mazewar. One of few remaining commercially unexplored free games was robot war games, where players program their own robots and put them into competition, sometimes even used for teaching programming; that frontier has also been broken now, with a commercial PC version with nifty 3D graphics.

    So, it seems to me that game companies are making proprietary games out of non-proprietary, often open source, games. They add a lot of graphics, modify the gameplay somewhat (often dumbing it down for the masses), and do a pretty good job at packaging. When the original inventor of a free game does that, I don't have a problem with it, but most of these companies are generations away from the original inventors.

    Should they get the kind of eternal protection that game patents give for that? I think not. Their slick, commercial implementation of ideas deserves copyright protection (and, at that, it should probably be more limited than current copyright). In the give-and-take of ideas between non-proprietary and proprietary games, IMO, commercial game companies have been doing a lot more taking than giving.

  • pffft! (Score:4)

    by fluxrad ( 125130 ) on Sunday September 10, 2000 @06:05AM (#790886)
    I personally feel that these games (as with almost anything this old) should become public domain. We're talking about games that are virtually monuments in gaming circles....no...modern life.

    Raise your hand if you haven't played Tetris or PacMan...ok - the bolivian in the back of the room can put his hand down now. - But in all seriousness. These games have become so popular over time, and have been so played - and recognized that, while there is still money to be made, Hasbro (or whomever at this point) should be benevolent enough to just let people do as they will. Will someone PLEASE follow ID's lead with Quake (yes kids - there were two made before Q3A) and just (basically) give it away. (Of course, this need not turn into a thread about the economics of Qcrack ;-)

    One other question...what kind of precidence does this set for a game like Arkanoid? I know there are litteraly hundreds of clones like Breakout and SuperBreakout on the market. I can't remember specifically which came first - but you get the gist.

    Oh well, i suppose this is a sad day for owners of the TI-82


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

  • This is a TERRIBLE Precedent (Score:4)

    by Mathonwy ( 160184 ) on Sunday September 10, 2000 @05:59AM (#790887)
    The problem with this kind of ruling is that it is extremely vague for what constitutes a "Direct clone". For example, suppose I played asteroids, loved the game, and decided to make a similar game. Suppose I then make asteroids, but instead of starting with 2 asteroids, I start with 3. Or give your ship a grenade launcher. Or add asteroid bases hidden inside some asteroids. Or whatever other improvements over the original I think are necessary. Under this decision (Which is thankfully a settlement and not a ruling) I might still be in legal trouble. After all, how far do you have to go from the original game to be safe? How do you even MEASURE such distance? Obviously changing the title is not enough. Minor changes are not enough... If interpreted liberally enough, you could even argue hasbro now owns the entire genera. Imagine if CAPCOM tried to argue this way, and said that Mortal Kombat, Dead or Alive, Tekken, King of Fighters, whatever... ... were all in violation of being variations on their original Street Fighter game? Or Nintendo demanding that all side-scrolling platform games cease production, as they are clearly very similar to the original Super Mario Brothers? These is probably a bit less likely to happen, since those games have been out for a while, and the companies owning them are quite a bit better able to defend themselves. But think for a moment, how far removed are these (absurd) cases from the Hasbro case?

    There actually have been cases similar to this before. Lotus, when they came out with Lotus1-2-3 had a very nice menu system, composed of heiarchical menus. When other companies said "woah, good idea" lotus tried to sue them for incorperating "lotus-like menus". Fortunatly Lotus lost, or the suit was dropped or something. (I forget which)

    The thing that worries me about this decision is that it mirrors other very disturbing events a little too closely for my taste. Consider the similarities between this and the DeCSS trial: DeCSS has NOTHING stolen from anything copyrighted, it was an entirely original work. It functioned as a "black box", where given the same input, it would produce the same output as the DVD hardware. It was basically an emulator. The companies that Hasbro was going after had produced games that were also entirely original works; they shared no code with the hasbro originals. They just looked fairly similar, and had similar play styles.

    A couple of years ago, judging from other precedents, Hasbro's case would have been tossed out. The siding of courts against vague, poorly defined "imitation" demonstrates a swing in the pendulum that I don't like.

  • Webfoot's Response (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 10, 2000 @09:59AM (#790888)
    I'm one of the owners of Webfoot Technologies, a company that was sued by Hasbro. For the past 6 months we've had to sit back quietly (advise of our attorneys) and keep quiet. I'd like to clear up some facts and offer some opinions. 1. Our games were made BEFORE Hasbro was in the software business. 2. Our games are not clones. 3. We did not admit to any copyright violation. This was not part of the settlement. 4. The settlement offer was too good for us to refuse. 5. We did not agree to any future restrictions on the types of games we may make. Our games were made 2 years BEFORE Hasbro's retro games. That's right. Hasbro wasn't even in the software business when we made our games! It looks like some large publishers may have saw all us retro fans finding a market, and decided to join in after we had tested out the market. I really don't know... all I know is that Webfoot was making retro games long before Hasbro purchased Atari. Webfoot has been making retro games since 1994, shortly after Atari announced it was abandoning retro. We made the games because we love these games, we grew up with them, and none of the big guys were making them at that time. It's specifically because the big companies had abandoned retro that we wanted to see more games made. Our games are anything but direct clones or rip-offs. I invite anyone to check out our games and see just how close they are to the Atari properties. Our games are so incredibly different, we are puzzled as to why we were sued while makers of exact clones still continue to sell their cloned games in stores. Here are links to a couple of the games involved in the lawsuit: http://www.webfootgames.com/catalog/3dgeo.htm http://www.webfootgames.com/catalog/3dfrog.htm If you just look at the screen-shots, you'll be puzzled as to why we were sued for copyright violation. The game play rules are different and massively expanded beyond any 20 year-old retro game. All the game art, levels, music, and sounds are original. Copyright laws do not protect basic ideas. They protect the unique expression of a work (the graphics, the program code, the sounds, the levels), but not the underlying game idea. Patent law would protect gameplay rules, but no patents are owned with respect to these games. If a patent had existed, it would have expired by now. But copyrights do not protect these ideas, and to this day we strongly believe no copyrights were violated in this case. Also, the names of the games do not belong to the developers. The titles are registered trademarks of eGames and the other publishers. That's why the trademark issues did not effect Webfoot. Our attorneys were baffled that we were being accused of copyright violation, since our games in most people's opinions who actually see them, clearly do not seem to infringe on any Hasbro copyrights (or 20 year old Atari properties). In fact, through the settlement agreement Webfoot does not admit any copyright violation took place. We absolutely refused to sign such a settlement agreement because we firmly believe that our games do not infringe. In fact, at one point Webfoot and MVP Software had dropped out of settlement talks specifically over this matter. We were comfortable litigating this matter, all the way to trial if necessary. We also refused to sign anything that would limit our ability to make any kind of game in the future. Most of the settlement text is public information. I encourage everyone to look at the settlement text and you'll see that it really wasn't a "win" for anyone, but a painful compromise for all parties involved, as is the nature of settlements. So why did we settle? Because we were offered with a settlement that was just too good to turn down. These games were almost 3 years old and were being removed from the stores with or without Hasbro's help. We were willing to fight for a matter of principle, but the last settlement offer was too good. No one gets rich making retro games (I wish someone had warned Hasbro about this in 1997). You do it for the love of gaming. Some people like FPS, some people like RPG, and some of us like retro. It's really just a matter of taste. I would ask that anyone posting opinions please take a look at the games before posting. It seems sometimes that corporations who are able to spend the most money spreading their propaganda are able to spread information that isn't factual. Please look at the games and look at the facts. Don't be fooled by expensive propaganda. Ask yourself why the games that are exact clones are still being sold in stores today? The answer may be that there is an intense turf-war going on between eGames and Hasbro over the drug-store market. It seems eGames has achieved a position as the sole distributor to many drug-store chains, including Rite-Aid and Walgreens. In fact, the CEO of eGames told me personally that the lawsuit was filed just days after a direct confrontation with Hasbro over the drug-store arena. Had this been a stunning victory for Hasbro, then eGames would have been forced out of business, all the defendants would have admitted to copyright violation, and massive restrictions would have been placed on us all. None of these things happened. In fact, the lawsuit is not over. Andre LeMoth of Xtreme Games will continue to litigate this case until the end. We wish him luck and a little more, since we're donating to his legal defense fund (www.xgames3d.com). I'd like to thank the development community for their incredible support. We were very surprised by the alliance created by this lawsuit! It certainly helped us get through a very difficult time knowing so many were offering their help and support. I wish all those great independent developers out there the best of luck, and for those of you who love retro gaming, let's hope it will always be our decision as to which products we wish to play. Dana Dominiak, President Webfoot Technologies, Inc.

  • What about non-PC games (Score:5)

    by Mike1024 ( 184871 ) on Sunday September 10, 2000 @05:59AM (#790889)
    Hey,

    I'm getting the rights to Solitaire. Then I'll bribe^H^H^H^H^Hlobby the US government to place a 100% tax on playing cards, in case they are used to play Solitaire, which I have the rights to. I will also demand Microsoft pay my 100% of the profits they made from Windows 95 sales - card games are all it's good for.

    Michael

    ...another comment from Michael Tandy.

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