90 replies to this topic

[Cybergoth]

Hi there!

I'll compile a list of trademarks here containing all stuff us homebrewers shouldn't waste any time honoring anymore, by no longer creating stuff like games, ports or sequels for it.

I'll limit it to trademarks where already "something" happened, not wanting to wake any sleeping dogs...

==========================================

Atari:
- Breakout
- Combat
- Haunted House
- Pong
- Warlords

20th Century Fox:
- Planet of the Apes
- Futurama

The Tetris Company:
- Tetris

==========================================

Greetings,
Manuel

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Boulderdash, though I would probably try to get around that one.

BTW: Can you please unstick my 3rd Minigame thread? Thanks!

[Cybergoth]

Hi there!

Thomas Jentzsch said:

Boulderdash

I thought a while about including Boulder Dash. Do you have any reference of First Star actively stopping a hobbyists BD project?

Greetings,
Manuel

[TMR]

Cybergoth said:

I thought a while about including Boulder Dash. Do you have any reference of First Star actively stopping a hobbyists BD project?

To my knowledge they've only prevented distribution of the originals on the web because they're planning and/or doing things with the current generation of hardware. They've let anything done with the Boulderdash Construction Kit survive though, so i'm not sure how they're standing right now...

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Cybergoth said:

I thought a while about including Boulder Dash. Do you have any reference of First Star actively stopping a hobbyists BD project?

No, but Andrew should have.

[NovaXpress]

Right now the rule is to stay away from ANYTHING owned by Atari as well as all TV/movie tie-ins.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Stell-A-Sketch

[Albert]

NovaXpress said:

Right now the rule is to stay away from ANYTHING owned by Atari as well as all TV/movie tie-ins.

This is probably a good rule of thumb.

..Al

[Lord-Chaos]

Thomas Jentzsch said:

Boulderdash, though I would probably try to get around that one.

BTW: Can you please unstick my 3rd Minigame thread? Thanks!

But there are several commercial clones, for example the Emerald Mine games (3 disk based + 1 on CD) for the AMIGA , plus of course, dozens of public domain clones.

So I think as long as someone doesn't call the game "Boulder Dash", there should be no problems.

BTW. Emerald Mine was a more enhanced Boulder Dash with 2-player option.Not doable on the 2600, but certainly on the 7800 or the 800.
It was made by Kingsoft, a German company, long dead I think.

Thimo

[TMR]

Lord-Chaos said:

BTW. Emerald Mine was a more enhanced Boulder Dash with 2-player option.Not doable on the 2600, but certainly on the 7800 or the 800.
It was made by Kingsoft, a German company, long dead I think.

[Wince] Be careful, there's no such thing as "long dead" when it comes to copyrights... someone still holds 'em.

[kisrael]

Yes, with rise of corporations as "virtual people", they've insisted on keeping copyrights in every flavor essentially forever...thus completely subverting one of the core idea of copyrights, that after a while it goes into the public domain and is part of our shared cultural heritage.

Ah well...I'm sure Shakespeare's descendents wish they were getting royalties every time someone put on Hamlet.

That said, it still burns my ass that there are about a billion Goggle hits on the word pong before you get to anything infogratari.

[StanJr]

all Activision stuff is off limits, right?

[Cybergoth]

Hi there!

StanJr said:

all Activision stuff is off limits, right?

Hm... at least the original binaries. I have never seen them stopping a homebrew though... I guess they probably would, but still there's no reference yet...

Greetings,
Manuel

[Jacob Rose]

Hmm, do you think that Shakespeare would be popular today if his descendants had held a copyright and had enforced licensing fees and prevented derivations? Or would stifling copyright enforcement have allowed some other playwright's work (say, a playright with no heirs - or a generous one) to have become more prevalent, more studied, more appreciated?

Copyright enforcement is about sucking off some of that cultural momentum as profits. Suck too much, and the momentum is lost, and the culture loses - but so do the copyright holders. It's not in their interest to do it to the destruction of the phenomenon. However, they may not realize how fragile the phenomenon is - how it depends on the hard work of individual programmers who are not expecting to make a mint on their work (maybe not even a peppermint...), and one or two key small businesses like AtariAge and Pixels Past (are any others still alive? I know Hozer was killed by some other copyright issue).

[StanJr]

Cybergoth said:

Hi there!

StanJr said:

all Activision stuff is off limits, right?

Hm... at least the original binaries. I have never seen them stopping a homebrew though... I guess they probably would, but still there's no reference yet...

Greetings,
Manuel

Tell you what, you create an Enduro II, or Cosmic Commuter II, and we'll see how it goes....

[Andrew Davie]

Thomas Jentzsch said:

Cybergoth said:

I thought a while about including Boulder Dash. Do you have any reference of First Star actively stopping a hobbyists BD project?

No, but Andrew should have.

They are very protective of their copyright, but more than that they want any Boulderdash clones to be true to their vision of the product. So though they might be open to the idea of people making versions of the game, their stance on ownership and rights and especially their requirement of complete ownership, control and approval rights make it a very difficult prospect to actually write one.

I found them very nice to talk to, so they're not bad people at all. Just people who are going to be very very rigid in enforcing their ownership rights. And rightly so.

Cheers
A

[davidcalgary29]

criminal unbeliever said:

Hmm, do you think that Shakespeare would be popular today if his descendants had held a copyright and had enforced licensing fees and prevented derivations? Or would stifling copyright enforcement have allowed some other playwright's work (say, a playright with no heirs - or a generous one) to have become more prevalent, more studied, more appreciated?

The issue of plagiarism (and intellectual property rights) has been an issue since art was, well, conceptualized. Most Renaissance playrights (including Mr. Shakespeare and his contemporaries) did, in fact, jealously guard all extant property rights with respect to their works, and zealously attacked any other work that they felt was directly "inspired" by their own...even if they had stolen the idea for their particular work from someone else in the first place.

If an idea is a good one, it's going to flourish, irrespective of any legal barriers created to enrich/benefit its perceived creator.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Andrew Davie said:

They are very protective of their copyright, but more than that they want any Boulderdash clones to be true to their vision of the product.  So though they might be open to the idea of people making versions of the game, their stance on ownership and rights and especially their requirement of complete ownership, control and approval rights make it a very difficult prospect to actually write one.

I found them very nice to talk to, so they're not bad people at all.  Just people who are going to be very very rigid in enforcing their ownership rights.  And rightly so.

So even a BD clone with different graphics, levels and a different name would need an agreement, right?

[TMR]

Thomas Jentzsch said:

So even a BD clone with different graphics, levels and a different name would need an agreement, right?

Emerald Mine, Rockman and Repton exist as commercial "clones" on the 8bits and there used to be (and still might be) a Dexter's Lab game based on Boulderdash on the Fox Kids website, i'd say it's "safe" to do something that uses the base ideas but doesn't rip directly from First Star's games...?

[Marc Oberhäuser]

Lord-Chaos said:

But there are several commercial clones, for example the Emerald Mine games (3 disk based + 1 on CD) for the AMIGA , plus of course, dozens of public domain clones.

So I think as long as someone doesn't call the game "Boulder Dash", there should be no problems.

BTW. Emerald Mine was a more enhanced Boulder Dash with 2-player option.Not doable on the 2600, but certainly on the 7800 or the 800.
It was made by Kingsoft, a German company, long dead I think.

Thimo

Kingsoft is not dead, Kingsoft was bought by Electronic Arts in 1995 and was renamed in 1997 (IIRC) to Electronic Arts Germany, so the copyright lies be EA now.

Marc.

[Cybergoth]

Hi there!

In 1998 one of Germans biggest publishers had a commercial BD clone released, "Pirateninsel" and I think there's another commercial (low-budget) BD title sold here right now.

Greetings,
Manuel

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Hm, so "someone" could write a BD clone but with different graphics, levels and under a different name. So that would be legal, right?

And then "someone else" could hack or patch the original BD graphics and levels into it...

And then "someone" could write a simple tool, which allows everybody to easily customize the game like he wants it to.

And finally AA could offer making carts from those personal, customized hacks?

[Cybergoth]

Hi there!

Here

http://download.t-online.de/t-games/dl_det...ml?progid=20503

can you buy a BD clone for €3.90 from the Telekom...

Greetings,
Manuel

[Shawn Jefferson]

Thomas Jentzsch]Hm, on so "someone" could write a BD clone but with different graphics, levels and under a different name. So that would be legal, right?[/quote, said:

Probably. I don't know how far "look and feel" lawsuits can go.

Quote

And then "someone else" could hack or patch the original BD graphics and levels into it...

Sure, as long as they don't distribute it. The level-designs and graphics are both covered by copyright.

Quote

And then "someone" could write a simple tool, which allows everybody to easily customize the game like he wants it to.

I don't think this would ever be a problem.

Quote

And finally AA could offer making carts from those personal, customized hacks?

They will most certainly be asked to take those down.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Shawn Jefferson said:

They will most certainly be asked to take those down.

But what if they only offer the usual service for making an individual cart? The binary is send to AA by the customer, and all they are doing is to put it on a cart.