I was just brushing up on the licensing history of TSPINRIS(hah!) vs. freeware games. Stumbled upon the TTC wiki, I read something new in the article by "bed". TSPINRIS by "Bed" Funny how the third reply from Hank Regers has gone missing, something in there had to be quite interesting. In all arguments in the emails and all, what does Nintendo think of Mario clones? Following from 8-bit till 16-bit Mario titles. Everything from look to feel has been put into Mario clones, copyright infringement? Tho, from the arguments I read, they did say that "look and feel" isn't copyrightable.
Nintendo sued the makers of The Great Giana Sisters and won. Later Mario clones such as Sonic the Hedgehog incorporated enough differences that the remaining elements could be claimed under a scenes faire defense. But the GGS screenshots on Wikipedia look more like SMB in graphical style than the fan games look like specific Tetris products.
During the mid-1980s, there weren't a lot of scrolling platformers, so games were called Mario clones. During the mid-1990s, there weren't a lot of first-person shooters, so games were called Doom clones. Likewise, when social simulators were new, some were called Sims clones.
Thanks for the info, so TSPINRIS clones can't fall on the "scenes faire" catagory because off too much similarities? Hmm.. can't think of any what which would make/break TSPINris to fall into the "scenes faire" claim. And what about issues like yours Tepples? Did you get flagged down? Flagged down even after stating that LJ was not an "authenthic TSPINRIS game"? How is it still up there? And the GBA version aswell.
as far as i know (and thats little) in germany, there is a big juristic difference between private persons and companies. if a private person does some mistake - for example selling trademarked jeans (diesel etc) on ebay - there is an upper limit (50 euro i think) in expenses that can accumulate trough getting lawyer "cease-and-desist" letters etc. so if you are a single private person developing some noncommercial freeware games, you have not much to fear, except to get forced to put down your beloved freeware-project. but hey - who cares? they can do nothing against anonymous fileshareing and webhosting. if they ever dare to attac freeware clones (again), it is so easy to turn off any official website and put up some torrent instead.
As I understand it, tetromino stacking games fall under the exclusion of "processes" and "methods of operation" from copyright. See U.S. Copyright Office - Games. That's why TTC has stopped bugging developers of fan games who have stopped misusing the trademark (e.g. Quinn and N-Blox). No. They didn't flag me down for freepuzzlearena (for PC), they didn't flag me down for TOD (for PC), they didn't flag me down for TOD (for GBA), they didn't flag me down for Tetramino (for NES), and they haven't yet flagged me down for LJ. As for luminesweeper, I wonder if it's just "game right" that keeps Disney (which bought the North American rights to the Q Entertainment franchises from Ubisoft) from flagging me down.
though not directly related to this topic, some of you might be interested in this stuff: http://domains.adrforum.com/domains/dec ... 114355.htm http://domains.adrforum.com/domains/dec ... 823282.htm http://domains.adrforum.com/domains/dec ... 732840.htm
Verdict: Tetris.net is transferred to Elorg. Verdict: Tetris.org is transferred to Tetris Holding. Verdict: Tetris.info and Crazytetris.com are transferred to Tetris Holding. All of these are trademark cases, and we know how to handle trademark cases: move TetrisConcept.com to a new domain. EDIT: Tetris Holding isn't the only company getting serious about trademarks. Today, instant messaging software Gaim was renamed Pidgin IM after threats from AOL.
