more games (plus crack-attack)

[Michael Schwendt]

On Mon, 25 Apr 2005 14:46:22 -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:

> 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.)

"Fair use" of trademarks in conjunction with advertising is not that
simple. The question is where to draw the line? You could run into
problems advertising your video gaming console with something like
"includes the 200 most popular game titles, such as Break-It, a Tetris
style game, and...", even if the Tetris game concept is not protected.

Concerning Boston Marathon, the example you give doesn't advertise
anything. Try advertising your own marathon (or half-marathon even) 
with a reference, something like "The 5th Somerville Individuals
Marathon 2005, with almost 3000 registered runners in last year the
smaller edition of Boston Marathon...". 

> 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.

And therefore it would be an even higher risk to create a specific
connection between a protected game design and something which started
as a "remake".