Legal questions about Games

[Tom 'spot' Callaway]

On Wed, 2005-06-08 at 22:56 -0400, JP LaFleur wrote:

> The question came as to what was allowable and what was not, and where.  Can we say "Tetris" in a
> description in a specfile comparing the package to the trademarked game?  Is it acceptable if the
> upstream game materials mention trademarked names? Is the game a lost cause if the official site 
> says "Tetris" on it?

IANAL, but I think you're OK as long as you're using the trademark under
the guidelines set by the Lanham Act for Fair Use.

For example, I can say that Aurora is a Linux for SPARC computers, even
though SPARC is a trademark that I do not own. I cannot say that Aurora
is SPARC, endorsed by SPARC, or the same as SPARC.

If in doubt, strip the references from the docs.

Greg, is it possible to pass this specific package (Crack-Attack!) by
legal to see if they agree with this assessment?

~spot
-- 
Tom "spot" Callaway: Red Hat Sales Engineer || GPG Fingerprint: 93054260
Fedora Extras Steering Committee Member (RPM Standards and Practices)
Aurora Linux Project Leader: http://auroralinux.org
Lemurs, llamas, and sparcs, oh my!