90 replies to this topic

[Shawn Jefferson]

Thomas Jentzsch said:

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.

Instead of offering Boulder Dash in the store, they offer a service to burn a copy of any ROM you send them onto a cartridge?

I don't know, my gut says that still is illegal. After all, if photocopy a book for you, that you bring in to my shop, that is still illegal. In this case, though, I don't know where the legal responsibility would lay. I have a feeling that any legal team would probably just sue everybody involved, if their cease and desist letters didn't have any effect.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Ok, then the last step should be (officially) avoided.

[StanJr]

ok, fine, so suppose AA sells you this nifty paper clip, and with it you get a free BD cart. No payment whatsoever for the BD cart, its TOTALLY free. The paper clip will run you $25, but the BD cart is free, just for purchasing this fine paper clip.....

[carlsson]

Maybe First Star (or who owns the rights) would let through a "man digs tunnels, avoids stones, picks up gems" game if it is not a big Xbox title or something alike. But if you make a "man digs tunnels, avoids stones, picks up gems, avoids butterflies, takes advantage of magic walls, grows amoeba and slime and blinks his eyes twice every second" game, it is much more obvious a 1:1 Boulder Dash copy, even with different graphics and name.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

So no blinking eyes then!

[Cootster]

I guess the easier question would be "What companies don't bother to harass people programming for old systems?"

Taito and Namco are apparently cool w/ Eduardo making Space Invaders Collection and Pac-Man Collection for the CV . . . What about Exidy and Star Fire/ Death Derby?

[Lord-Chaos]

I think it's ridiculous to sue hobby programmers who write games for 20+ year old systems.There is no money for those programmers to make.

But for the companies, if they create stuff like the Flashback or something similar as they can include homebrews, too and earn a few extra bucks, because curious buyers buy them because of unreleased or new games.

AFAIK Infogrames has some financial trouble right now, maybe that's the reason they behave like they do.Maybe a bigger company will buy them soon and everything will change.

Apropos clones : In the 80s, the magazines were full of type-in listings with Pacman, Breakout etc. clones and nobody ever sued them.

And First Star never sued any of the companies that made Boulder Dash clones, I think because games like "Emerald Mine" were NOT 1:1 clones, but had additional features like 2-player mode, keys and doors etc.
They don't have a copyright to all dig- and collect games, because THAT was done before (Mr.Do).

Thimo

[sku_u]

You can pretty much consider all these off limits:

Big Five Software
EA
20th Century Fox
Nintendo
Coleco

[Atari-Jess]

StanJr said:

ok, fine, so suppose AA sells you this nifty paper clip, and with it you get a free BD cart.   No payment whatsoever for the BD cart, its TOTALLY free.  The paper clip will run you $25, but the BD cart is free, just for purchasing this fine paper clip.....

I don't think I could legitimize buying a 25 dollar paper clip there Stanno.

[jlh2600]

WOW. THey have put lawyers on you, cease and desist style?

So because of this no version of breakout exists where you have some degree of control?

[Atari_Jaguar]

mojofltr, on Sun Oct 3, 2004 5:33 PM, said:

Quote

Hm... Edtris was sold for years without any problems I think.

A while back I read that the Tetris Company were going after all Tetris clones, claiming to have a copyright on "the look and feel" of Tetris.

I just looked it up, and several articles turned up in the search. I nabbed up the link for the first name I recognized - <a href="http://slashdot.org/articles/99/02/19/0827245.shtml">Slashdot</a> It's back from 1999 - I have no clue if they are still rigorously pursuing game authors.

I'm not really sure what the story is with Edtris, Cubis, or Tetris26. I just supposed that the Tetris Company must have gotten after the authors, since I haven't seen any of these games for sale since Hozer days.

BTW, I would also think any Nintendo trademarks would be taboo as well.

Goodluck with that deal. There must be 7,498 Tetris clones minimum. Tee hee.

[carmel_andrews]

And i suppose that what applies to 'software' also applies to hardware and coding techniques like hardware scrolling, sprite scrolling, multi colour playfield graphics, split screen graphics.. etc etc, I believe that a majority of hardware coding/software coding technologies/techniques are still under the umbrella of Atari's library of patents, like the above examples and various others not mentioned here

And on the hardware side, I suppose that's why we have yet to see an A8 (atari 8bit) clone or 3rd party compatible, atari st clone (the milan and c lab jobbies are apparently based on the tt and falcon rather then the ST) also an atari lynx/jaguar clone or 3rd party compatible

I don't regard the 'flashback' series as clones as their primarily based on 'emulators'

Even the Amiga Inc's 'amiga one' machine is a PC running WinUAE... Boring

Atari_Jaguar, on Wed May 25, 2005 6:11 AM, said:

mojofltr, on Sun Oct 3, 2004 5:33 PM, said:

Quote

Hm... Edtris was sold for years without any problems I think.

A while back I read that the Tetris Company were going after all Tetris clones, claiming to have a copyright on "the look and feel" of Tetris.

I just looked it up, and several articles turned up in the search. I nabbed up the link for the first name I recognized - <a href="http://slashdot.org/articles/99/02/19/0827245.shtml">Slashdot</a> It's back from 1999 - I have no clue if they are still rigorously pursuing game authors.

I'm not really sure what the story is with Edtris, Cubis, or Tetris26. I just supposed that the Tetris Company must have gotten after the authors, since I haven't seen any of these games for sale since Hozer days.

BTW, I would also think any Nintendo trademarks would be taboo as well.

Goodluck with that deal. There must be 7,498 Tetris clones minimum. Tee hee.

[Luigi301]

Cootster, on Tue Oct 26, 2004 2:33 PM, said:

I guess the easier question would be "What companies don't bother to harass people programming for old systems?"

Taito and Namco are apparently cool w/ Eduardo making Space Invaders Collection and Pac-Man Collection for the CV . . .  What about Exidy and Star Fire/ Death Derby?

Exidy went out of business in the mid '90s. I don't think they'd care.

[Luigi301]

I can't sell my Super 255-Screen Non-Infringing Ball and Paddle Video Game?

[mos6507]

Shawn Jefferson, on Thu Oct 7, 2004 1:19 PM, said:

I don't know, my gut says that still is illegal.  After all, if photocopy a book for you, that you bring in to my shop, that is still illegal.  In this case, though, I don't know where the legal responsibility would lay.  I have a feeling that any legal team would probably just sue everybody involved, if their cease and desist letters didn't have any effect.

That's what Randy Crihfield used to do. He would burn any ROM image you wanted, regardless of whether it was a homebrew title or not.

It's grey, though, because how different is that from, let's say, hosting a ROM image which someone could download and load up their Supercharger or other multicart with? I guess the only difference is that it's presumed that very few people have such carts.

That's not even taking into account emulation.

[mos6507]

carmel_andrews, on Wed Jun 1, 2005 5:52 AM, said:

And i suppose that what applies to 'software' also applies to hardware and coding techniques like hardware scrolling, sprite scrolling, multi colour playfield graphics, split screen graphics.. etc etc, I believe that a majority of hardware coding/software coding technologies/techniques are still under the umbrella of Atari's library of patents, like the above examples and various others not mentioned here

The patents filed in relation to the 2600 and probably also the Atari 8-bit hardware have both expired by now. Not sure about the 7800. I think the expiration is 20 or 25 years on patents. I think the clock starts on when the patent is filed, not when it was granted. So both of these would be over 25 years old now. I think this is also why people can get away cloning the NES since the hardware is over 20 years old (not that they wouldn't do it anyway even if it is illegal). The original NES patent was probably filed in '83 or something.

Copyrights are what last such an insanely long time.

So anyone can legally clone the 2600 or A8, even by using Atari's original proprietary schematics as a guide vs. cleanroom reverse-engineering methods.

[Cybergoth]

Hi there!

http://www.lucasfangames.de/

Greetings,
Manuel

[brpocock]

mojofltr, on Sun Oct 3, 2004 5:33 PM, said:

A while back I read that the Tetris Company were going after all Tetris clones, claiming to have a copyright on "the look and feel" of Tetris. 

For the record ... yeah. Been there, gotten that C&D.

[Cybergoth]

brpocock, on Fri Jan 27, 2006 4:17 PM, said:

mojofltr, on Sun Oct 3, 2004 5:33 PM, said:

A while back I read that the Tetris Company were going after all Tetris clones, claiming to have a copyright on "the look and feel" of Tetris.

For the record ... yeah. Been there, gotten that C&D.

Thanks for confirming. I added Tetris to the main list.

[bear69designs]

Does anyone know who currently owns the trademarks/copyrights on M Network and Data Age? Specifically I'm wondering about the company names and logos. Thanks for any info...

[Cybergoth]

Well, someone _always_ owns the copyrights. The Trademarks are both dead though:

M-Network
Data Age

[xucaen]

mos6507, on Tue Aug 23, 2005 7:12 PM, said:

The patents filed in relation to the 2600 and probably also the Atari 8-bit hardware have both expired by now. Not sure about the 7800. I think the expiration is 20 or 25 years on patents. I think the clock starts on when the patent is filed, not when it was granted. So both of these would be over 25 years old now. I think this is also why people can get away cloning the NES since the hardware is over 20 years old (not that they wouldn't do it anyway even if it is illegal). The original NES patent was probably filed in '83 or something.

Copyrights are what last such an insanely long time.

So anyone can legally clone the 2600 or A8, even by using Atari's original proprietary schematics as a guide vs. cleanroom reverse-engineering methods.

Hi there, my guess on this is that Infogrames renewed the patents when they released the Flashback 2. I've read that a FB2 can be modded to play carts, so that would mean they used the same schematics (or very nearly so).

I did a google search and found this link: http://corporate.infogrames.com/pressrelea...ry.html?sid=599
Unfortunately, my work has a proxy server that is blocking access to infogrames so I have not read it yet.

Jim

[Cybergoth]

A patent can't be renewed.

[xucaen]

Cybergoth, on Fri Jul 14, 2006 11:08 AM, said:

A patent can't be renewed.

In that case they would probably have a new patent for the flashback 2. At least I should think so..
At any rate I don't know much about patents, never had one myself. But I did some quick searches at http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html.
I didn't find anything specific about the flashback, but look what I did find.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?...S=atari+AND+vcs



Jim

[Cybergoth]

xucaen, on Fri Jul 14, 2006 3:59 PM, said:

In that case they would probably have a new patent for the flashback 2. At least I should think so..

A patent will only be granted for something new and innovative, so I'd highly doubt anything in the FB2 can be considered patentworthy.