US District Court: Game Elements In Tetris Clone Infringe Tetris Co.'s Copyright 138
elegie writes "In the US, a District Court has ruled that the Tetris clone "Mino" infringes the Tetris Company's copyrights with regard to elements of the Tetris game design and gameplay. On one hand, a lawyer said that 'a puzzle game where a user manipulates blocks to form lines which disappear' would be noninfringing. At the same time, the Mino game's reuse of such Tetris elements as the dimensions of the playing field and the shape of the blocks constituted infringement. In addition, the Tetris game's artistic elements were not inseparably linked to the underlying mechanics and replicating an underlying idea and/or functionality (which would likely be uncopyrighted) would not justify copying visual expression from an existing game."
The Real Crime (Score:5, Insightful)
The real crime here is that Tetris is still protected under copyright.
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's absurd. The shape of the blocks comes from the fact that those are all the possible 2D geometric arrangements of 4 connected blocks on a grid. If anyone is infringed here, it's basic geometry.
Re:Oh good (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm afraid "four" is not a complex or original enough concept to warrant intellectual property protection.
three would yield a total of 2 possible shapes, and five yields 24 shapes, which quickly makes things unwieldy and complex. Using tetrominoes rather than pentominoes or triominoes is an obvious decision for anyone skilled in the field of game design.