90 replies to this topic

[sandmountainslim]

Cybergoth, on Thu Apr 6, 2006 4:20 AM, said:

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

M-Network
Data Age

Does that mean if some homebrew author decided to start releasing their games as "M Network" or "Data Age" that they could do so without legal Hybotchery involved?? If so I say DO IT

[kisrael]

sandmountainslim, on Sun Aug 6, 2006 10:59 AM, said:

Cybergoth, on Thu Apr 6, 2006 4:20 AM, said:

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

M-Network
Data Age

Does that mean if some homebrew author decided to start releasing their games as "M Network" or "Data Age" that they could do so without legal Hybotchery involved?? If so I say DO IT

That has to be one of the worst ideas I've heard today.

1. it seems "wrong" to me in a way making interesting and creative use of exisiting, if lapsed, Intellectual Property doesn't -- I mean, these were companies, with programmers, management, artists, etc, and they're gone, and the name should go with them.

2. It seems more likely to attract the attention of the lawyer folk. Based on my limited understanding of this kind of law, one of the fundamental points is to avoid confusing consumers... to confuse them into thinking that they're getting a product of company A when it's actually your punkass company B. What possible justification is there, then, besides that?

3. Actually, M-network... that was the Atari wing of the Blue Sky Rangers/ Intellivision folk, right? With Intellevision IP still making money for the onwers (through one of those X-in-1 TV units, an anthology compilation) etc I think this one would be a particularly bad to start messing with.

[sandmountainslim]

Makes as much sense as Infogrames calling themselves ATARI in my opinion
Goose/Gander.

[kisrael]

sandmountainslim, on Sun Aug 6, 2006 1:56 PM, said:

Makes as much sense as Infogrames calling themselves ATARI in my opinion
Goose/Gander.

Maybe, but they have lawyers. Plus, they forked over cash for the right to the name.

[sandmountainslim]

kisrael, on Sun Aug 6, 2006 1:59 PM, said:

sandmountainslim, on Sun Aug 6, 2006 1:56 PM, said:

Makes as much sense as Infogrames calling themselves ATARI in my opinion
Goose/Gander.

Maybe, but they have lawyers. Plus, they forked over cash for the right to the name.

Don't let The Man oppress you with his attorneys!
I urge you to release your next game under the Data Age banner and DARE the Infidel to say something about it.
WP

[kisrael]

Data Age... Pawnbroker, the game?

[sandmountainslim]

kisrael, on Sun Aug 6, 2006 7:42 PM, said:

Data Age... Pawnbroker, the game?

Now THAT would be a fun homebrew
You could run a pawn shop and customers would come in, you would score points for ripping people off and have points taken away when you buy something worthless
I LIKE it. Perhaps I will lobby for Pawnbroker 2600 after Fonz has been completed!
WP

[Pac Munchkin]

A simple way around Bolder Dash is to do a port of the C64 game Super Rock Fall, it was just like Bolder Dash.

Wade

[supercat]

Cybergoth, on Fri Jul 14, 2006 1:12 PM, said:

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

The FB2 may well contain a number of patent-worthy features. Although the device tries to mimic the behavior of an NMOS circuit designed many years ago, CMOS is in some significant ways different from NMOS and thus designs cannot be simply translated.

BTW, out of curiosity, does anyone know of the simplest logic circuit whose complement cannot be generated by a simple vertical/horizontal transformation?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Can somebody please Checkered Flag for me. Thanks!

[Cybergoth]

supercat, on Tue Aug 8, 2006 6:21 AM, said:

Cybergoth, on Fri Jul 14, 2006 1:12 PM, said:

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

The FB2 may well contain a number of patent-worthy features. Although the device tries to mimic the behavior of an NMOS circuit designed many years ago, CMOS is in some significant ways different from NMOS and thus designs cannot be simply translated.

If there was something patentworthy involved in the process, some XXX-on-a-chip thing producer would've patented it years before the FB2 I'd think.

Thomas Jentzsch, on Tue Aug 8, 2006 6:44 AM, said:

Can somebody please Checkered Flag for me. Thanks!

The trademark is abandoned.

But wouldn't Pit Stop be a better choice for the 2600?

[CPUWIZ]

Cybergoth, on Tue Aug 8, 2006 12:16 AM, said:

Thomas Jentzsch, on Tue Aug 8, 2006 6:44 AM, said:

Can somebody please Checkered Flag for me. Thanks!

The trademark is abandoned.

But wouldn't Pit Stop be a better choice for the 2600?

Now go find the copyright.

[Cybergoth]

CPUWIZ, on Tue Aug 8, 2006 7:17 AM, said:

Cybergoth, on Tue Aug 8, 2006 12:16 AM, said:

Thomas Jentzsch, on Tue Aug 8, 2006 6:44 AM, said:

Can somebody please Checkered Flag for me. Thanks!

The trademark is abandoned.

Now go find the copyright.

It's owned by Midway of course.

[batari]

Cybergoth, on Tue Aug 8, 2006 2:16 AM, said:

supercat, on Tue Aug 8, 2006 6:21 AM, said:

Cybergoth, on Fri Jul 14, 2006 1:12 PM, said:

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

The FB2 may well contain a number of patent-worthy features. Although the device tries to mimic the behavior of an NMOS circuit designed many years ago, CMOS is in some significant ways different from NMOS and thus designs cannot be simply translated.

If there was something patentworthy involved in the process, some XXX-on-a-chip thing producer would've patented it years before the FB2 I'd think.

It actually doesn't take much to get a patent these days. Case in point here.

Even with many high-tech patents that I've read, I still wonder how the idea could be patentable. Tech companies today encourage (and financially reward) their engineers to patent anything that they can slip by the overworked USPTO, whether genuinely new or innovative or not, so they can build up legal fodder against competing companies.

[pocketmego]

Pac Munchkin, on Mon Aug 7, 2006 1:52 AM, said:

A simple way around Bolder Dash is to do a port of the C64 game Super Rock Fall, it was just like Bolder Dash.

Wade

I fail to see what is so Taboo about making a game like Boulderdash. No one did anything about it the first time it happened. back when Boulderdash was called Mr. Do.

-Ray

[Mark2008]

If I can add my two cents, these discussions seem to always confuse trademark with copyright, and patents.

A trademark can last forever, is supposed to last forever. You couldn't call a game: Unreal Tournament, for a reason, that would create confusion with the product by another company that already owns that trademark.

I agree with that. Copyrights, I totally agree, should expire someday, and the work released to the public.

This is not to prevent Shakespeares descendents from collecting Royalties on Hamlet. The opposite, most works have ZERO commercial value eventually, and if copyrights never expire...that would mean once a work is no longer financially feasable as a product, it basically disappears forever from society. Shakespeare (was used as an example on another thread)...in my opinion is the wrong example, because its one of the rare works, that just may be commercial still today (although would it really maintained its popularity if it wasn't free?).

but anyway, to keep things from being lost forever, they go into the public domain, where people can use them, as they see fit.

Patents...they shouldn't be part of this discussion. No matter what game you write, you technically have to respect any patents, original or copy, doesn't matter. A game itself cannot be patented...but as we know certain concepts have been granted patents, and that is just a whole other discussion, though.

Ideas cannot be patented. Genre's cannot be patented. So, I gather the disucssion here is can someone to a pixel perfect copy of a game and use the original name....I think, of course not. And, I would prefer they didn't anyway, my personal preference, is for a new, better game.

My game is loosely based on battleship. Which is an interesting case. The internationally famous game played with graph paper and a pencil....was made famous in the United States by Milton Bradley. But the idea wasn't theirs...they themselves were benefiting from a public domain idea.

But battleship, while fun and classic, is also limited and we can do so much better with a computer, compared to well, pencil and paper... if I didn't have a new angle on it, I personally wouldn't program in this genre.

I guess my gut feeling, is its no loss not to be able to exactly copy someone elses work... be inspired by it, call it a genre and write in that genre, but ultimately its satisfying to do something new.

Sorry, I'm a rambler....end of speech!

Edited by Mark2008, Thu Nov 29, 2007 9:49 AM.

[Mark2008]

p.s. patents expire after 20 years. Even if at one time, somone held a patent on the idea of a 'sprite'...it expired a long time ago.
Patent issues are unlikely to be an issue for many reasons...one the original author of the software probably wasn't a patent holder anyway...if anything the company may have licensed a patent (doubt that was even done, though). Secondly, its expired. Thirdly, the patent was issued in error and is unenforceable. And on and on....doubt patents will come into play in doing ports of classic games.

Copyright and trademark, certainly...but not patents.

Anyway, for example the IBM PC BIOS was cloned, and that was perfectly legal...it held up in court. I don't think too many people are working from original source code.

So, that brings me to why I like that patents expire... because many classic gaming systems have expired patents, and can now be legally copied. And, what the companies who feel they have ownership may try to do, is then use a copyright argument on the BIOS or someting that holds a copyright... but you can clone that legally as long as you do so without copying the original (clean room engineering).

[wogihao]

So assuming that you dont have the money to purchace the rights to the game (i rember during the late 90s early 00s in the uk amstrad purchaced the rights to loads of clasic games from the 80s in the uk for pennies). If you were to reverse enginer the game would it need to be a series of people to do this,

For example you get some tech student to do the orignal product spesification based on him actualy playing the orignal game,

You then take that tech spec and design the game based on the tech spec from the student without useing the orignal as a refrence for stuff like dissasemblies ect.

Assuming that the graphics or text did not infringe on a trademark (like the atari logo) or a character. would this be ok.

On the other hand whats the going rate for the rights to a 2600 game, for the big ones like breakout ect i can imagine it costing a fair wack, but for the less well known games that were not linked to a TV/well know character wouldnt it be similar to the situation with amstrad and the spectrum games from the 80s - you could purchace the rights for next to nothing - then your have many more options?

[carmel_andrews]

Lest we forget...Activision and Imagic were created by pissed of Atari engineers and basically made copies of what Atari were putting out in the arcades

Atari and Ralph Baers 'video tennis' game wasn't excactly 'original' either (try willy higinbotham)

Atari's/Nutting associates computerspace, again, not exactly original (try Steve Russell's 'Space war)

Untill Ocean software came out with the 'first' official coin op conversion 'Hunchback' (outside Atari and the like) most of the 3rd party software releases (UK and US) were basically clones of other companies games or what people had seen in the arcades...Infact you could say that the initial 3rd party games market where about as professional and proficient as today's homebrewers are

The pivotal point in the evolution of 3rd party games publishing didn't start with Atari and activision settling out of court way back when....It started when Ocean put out Hunchback...That's when other publishers and wannabe games programmers/designers suddenly realised that if they want to be taken seriously they'd better get their act together and start offering something people want...and not just another pacman/space invaders clone

[Primordial Ooze]

Can someone check if the patent/trademark for pong has expired? It was created on 1972/1973 so i would think the patents/trademarks would be expired by now. Not only that but there was never an "official" verson of pong for the Atari 2600, plus there are probally 1 Million Pong clones out there by now.

Sincerely,

Open Source Pong

Edited by Open Source Pong, Mon May 5, 2008 8:58 PM.

[Cybergoth]

Not only is it still alive, the current owner even forced Atari Age to remove "Mondo Pong" and "Joustpong" from its store.

You see, this thread is called "List of Taboo Trademarks" for a reason. In the first post there's a list

[cosmosiss]

I'll say it again: Call it Bong (batari pong)

[Primordial Ooze]

I absolutely love the name Bong, anyways whos the copyright holder, Infogames?

Sincerely,

Open Source Pong

[WatchVenusSpa]

Here's a question about Venutre, if Exidy is out of business, does anyone know if Venture is fair game to remake or make sequels?

[BrianC]

WatchVenusSpa, on Fri Oct 23, 2009 2:49 AM, said:

Here's a question about Venutre, if Exidy is out of business, does anyone know if Venture is fair game to remake or make sequels?

It seems H.R. Kaufmann, president of a company named Xidy has the rights to Exidy games and allowed the release of the ROMs to some of Exidy's earlier games at www.mamedev.org for free.

Edited by BrianC, Fri Jan 29, 2010 3:35 AM.