> It does make me wonder what would happen if a game like football wasn't
> as old as it is (and probably past copyrighting). I wonder if someone
> will copyright ultimate frisbee?
I know a _little_ bit about intellectual-property law. That is, I'm not
a law student, but anyone can look up the statutes and I have (I managed to
find official copies on a govermnent web site somewhere, but the library
might be less troublesome); however, I don't know any of the precedents,
which are important. Allow me:
First off a lot of these things are patents, not copyrights - yes, one
can patent a game design. No, nobody could patent Ultimate Frisbee, because
good written descriptions are already in wide circulation. Similarly a
patent can in general not be taken out on products which have already been
brought to market.
For clarity: yes, all games are copyrighted even if they're not patented,
but that doesn't protect by itself against similar games, only against
direct theft of code, graphics, sounds, or text (and really short snippets
of text can't be copyrighted by themselves).
> Hopefully things like "platform games" (since that's what I was working
> on!) and first-person shooters (like the id games mentioned above) are
> generic enough they would not be able to be challenged in court. How do
> you describe the look and feel of these games so that you show where you
> were horribly original? "The man jumps from level to level, jumps over
> potentially lethal stuff, and climbs up and down ladders." Might as well
> be describing a Jackie Chan flick as a video game.
"The player sprite (which may but does not necessarily resemble a human)
has freedom of motion at a limited speed on the depictions of platforms,
under the control of the human player ... The human player may "jump", an
action in which the player sprite temporarily moves up from the surface
directly beneath it, often on a path meant to approximate the action of
gravity. While a jump is in progress, the player sprite need not bear any
particular relation to onscreen platforms; however, at the end of the jump,
the player will be penalized if the player sprite is not again directly atop
a flat surface. A jump may serve the purpose of avoiding the sprites of
inimical objects/entities, or of providing transport between disconnected
platforms."
I doubt that's rigorous enough, but I had fun writing it and it makes my
point I believe.
> disappear is, um, suspiciously close to the original Tetris. As Matt
> suggested to me via AIM today, Columns by Sega is a pretty good take-off
> on Tetris that I don't think would be challenged successfully in court.
> The premise of Tetris cannot be described so broadly as to include
> Columns and still give someone who'd seen neither game an clear idea of
> what Tetris is like.
Sure it can. Relevant terminology would be "block-location grid",
"active block-entity", and so on. All depends on the original wording
actually used, of course.
I can't, however, pass a verdict on the validity of the Tetris Company's
claim. Possibly it's among the messages still in my backlog, on which note
I'd like to apologize for replying to such an out-of-date message.
____________________________________________________________________________
|The Mauve Baron| Beep | dankna@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx |
|---------------| Blip | http://www.bergen.org/~dankna/ |
| Dan Knapp | Bonk | C PS SQL Java Unix Mac RPN/L NES SMB1 BM |
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