more games (plus crack-attack)

Matthew Miller mattdm at mattdm.org
Mon Apr 25 18:46:22 UTC 2005


On Mon, Apr 25, 2005 at 07:32:47PM +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> First of all, the name Tetris and related names are trademarked. So, using
> that name--or even a confusingly similar name--for comparing the games
> would be a legal problem. With regard to the game concept, I don't think

A pretty tenuous problem. Using names descriptively is fair use. (Even if
you're advertising something, you don't have to say "that long race they had
last week in that big New England city" -- you can say "Boston Marathon",
*even though* Boston Marathon is a trademark.)

The people who own Tetris, however, claim that they have a "look and feel"
copyright on the game that covers anything remotely similar. This is
probably ridiculous too, but they've apparently got the money to threaten
people about it.



-- 
Matthew Miller           mattdm at mattdm.org        <http://www.mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>                <http://linux.bu.edu/>
Current office temperature: 75 degrees Fahrenheit.




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