a Gamasutry Exclusive: Tetris' Legal Clone War Versus Blockles http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_i ... tory=22815 (for more, open the link)
At least seven of the nine elements of alleged "distinctive trade dress" (other than 4-block pieces and possibly the hard drop trail) are present in Dr. Mario Online Rx. I wonder how far Tetris will push this one given how quickly Quinn went back up after the web site was rewritten not to imply any connection to Tetris.
Though the 4-block pieces would probably be the key element there. Interesting if you could get away with clones though simply by making the well stupidly wide or removing hard drop trails though.
The distinctive trade dress made me laugh, because either everything is so general or so trivial, so you really do need to argue the package of everything together. Still, everyone makes clones of Tetris and they don't sue everyone, so they must suspect the software was copied. I wouldn't want to play Blockles because of the weird well dimensions and the way they have taken the guideline colours and swapped them to different pieces, so it seems like a waste of a lawsuit to me.
I think the general strategy for TTC seems to be that they'll file a lawsuit in the hope that the game simply gets removed without any sort of legal fight. Doesn't really matter with the sort of scare-tactics they're using whether the case has a real chance or not.
Blockles has an inverse T-piece that's made out of I think 5 blocks though, so that argument doesn't hold.
What they are claiming is that this is a very obvious clone of the korean online tetris, and they simply tried to "change just enough to make it non infringing". They don't want that stunt to work. In fact, it probably offends them more than a quality clone that actually accurately represents the gameplay.
The defense might be interested in these cases: CA v. Altai: Similarity of computer programs shall be determined by the AFC test: describing the programs at various levels of abstraction, filtering out uncopyrightable elements, and comparing what's left. Lotus v. Borland: User interface of a computer program is largely dictated by function and therefore has a thin copyright if any. Dastar v. Fox: A trademark may not be used as an ersatz patent or copyright. Sega v. Accolade; Chamberlain v. Skylink; Lexmark v. Static Control: A copyright may not be used as an ersatz patent. These are less directly relevant to Tetris v. BioSocia, but they do concur with Dastar v. Fox.
The defense won't be interested in the Munchkin Pac-Man rip-off though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munchkin_(Videopac_game) The funny thing is my family had Munch Man for the TI-99/4A, and I don't know why TI never got sued over it, because it basically ripped off Pac-Man and the name from Munchkin in one go. We also had TI Invaders, which was just a clone of Space Invaders. Heh, my parents were so cheap we never had name brand anything.
The very argument used to by Atari to win that case could easily apply to this one. THat said i'm note sure they would have won if the case was re-tried today, as the gameplay is very different.
I just tried Dr. Mario Online Rx (North American version), and it indeed has hard drop trails. That makes eight of nine. I've got another experiment to try. Start with all rules of Nintendo's Dr. Mario, but make these changes: Make the well 20 percent bigger (10x20). Use the seven one-sided tetrominoes, one solid color for each shape, placed with their longest side down, instead of 2-color dominoes. Add a rule from Puyo Pop: Start with no viruses in the field. Add a rule reminiscent of Yoshi's Cookie: Clear a full row instead of 4 in any row or column. Disregard color in line clears. What is the result? EDIT AGAIN: Capcom v. Data East appears to diminish the importance of the Munchkin case (Atari v. Philips).
I've got one too: Take Half-Life 2. Remove all instances of guns and all enemies aside from head crabs. Instead of head crabs, have tetrominoes. Instead of first person shooter gameplay, have Tetris gameplay. What do you get?
I think I figured out the key difference between the decision in Atari v. Philips and Capcom v. Data East, and it appears to work in the favor of cloners, but incidentally not in the favor of reskinners like Rich Nagel. Philips had designed the Munchkin character to look too much like Pac-Man, including the animation of the mouth opening and closing even when the character isn't near a pill. That went beyond the expression necessary to convey the idea of moving in four directions through a maze, collecting all game pieces, and evading enemies while not powered up, and was thus not covered under the "merger" or "scenes a faire" doctrine. More Data East: Data East v. Epyx, 9 U.S.P.Q.2d 1322; 862 F.2d 204; 1989 Copr.L.Dec. P 26. The judge quoted Krofft Television v. McDonalds, 562 F.2d 1157, 1162 (9th Cir.1977): "When idea and expression coincide, there will be protection against nothing other than identical copying."
