VG Pocket is a series of handheld dedicated game consoles built by JungleTac and sold by Performance Designed Products LLC. The VG Pocket model was the first console of its type to have a 2" backlit color LCD screen.
143-581: The consoles have built-in games, the number of which varies with each model and many are clones and hacks of old Nintendo Entertainment System and arcade games . The devices also have a TV-out port with composite video and audio streaming through a non-standard stereo mini headset jack. In 2008, the Caplet and Tablet models were also finalists in the International Design Excellence Awards ; they were designed by Stuart Karten Design,
286-420: A Los Angeles -based industrial design firm. There are five VG Pocket models available: The VG Pocket Max is a handheld dedicated console distributed by Performance Designed Products. The system contains 75 games, which are mostly modified NES games. It has a 2.5" backlit color LCD screen, four buttons (plus a reset and a power button), a directional pad, volume control, a single speaker, a headphone jack, and
429-527: A TV-out port. In the UK a handheld was made called the Gamespower 50. The Gamespower 50 contained almost all the games (with names changed, such as Bird Droppings retitled as Birdies Nest ) and looked exactly the same, except with different color. A plug and play version was made by Dream Gear, being essentially the same as the Gamespower 50. The plug n' play looks like a Dreamcast controller, but internally there
572-566: A different color soon crowd the shelves. That is, until the public stops buying or something better comes along. Companies who believe that microcomputer games are the hula hoop of the 1980s only want to play Quick Profit". The degree of cloning was so great that in 1981, Atari warned in full-page advertisements "Piracy: This Game is Over", stating that the company "will protect its rights by vigorously enforcing [its] copyrights and by taking appropriate action against unauthorized entities who reproduce or adapt substantial copies of ATARI games", like
715-520: A direct approach to the infringing party in order to settle the dispute out of court. "... by 1978, the scope was expanded to apply to any 'expression' that has been 'fixed' in any medium, this protection granted automatically whether the maker wants it or not, no registration required." With older technology like paintings, books, phonographs, and film, it is generally not feasible for consumers to make copies on their own, so producers can simply require payment when transferring physical possession of
858-749: A fixed period, after which the copyright expired. It was "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or the Purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned." The act also alluded to individual rights of the artist. It began, "Whereas Printers, Booksellers, and other Persons, have of late frequently taken the Liberty of Printing ... Books, and other Writings, without
1001-441: A flooded dedicated-game console market, and creating the industry's first market crash in 1977. Eventually, home consoles switched from built-in games to programmable microprocessor -based systems that operated from software stored in game cartridges within the second generation , making it more difficult to clone at the hardware level. However, off-brand manufacturers attempted to make bootleg copies of these consoles that has
1144-579: A game in digital marketplaces is common. It is hard to prevent and easy to compete with existing games. Developers can copyright the graphics, title, story, and characters, but have more difficulty protecting software design and game mechanics. A patent for the mechanics is possible but expensive and time-consuming. Popular game concepts often lead to that concept becoming incorporated or expanded upon by other developers. In other cases, games may be developed with clear influence from one or more earlier games. Such derivations are not always considered clones though
1287-405: A home-computer clone. In Atari, Inc. v. Amusement World, Inc. (547 F. Supp. 222, 1982), Atari sued Amusement World claiming that its video game Meteors violated their copyright on Asteroids . The court did find twenty-two similarities between the two games, but ruled against Atari's claims, citing these elements as scènes à faire for games about shooting at asteroids. This was based on
1430-557: A limited fashion to protect novel gameplay ideas, such as the navigation system in Sega's Crazy Taxi games. Sega sued Fox Interactive for patent infringement for their use of a similar system in The Simpsons: Road Rage , a case that was ultimately settled out of court. Trademarks have also been used in a very limited fashion to block other developers from using the same terminology for their games or gameplay. More recently, with
1573-558: A loss of over $ 100 million to Donkey Kong clones on various different platforms despite attempts at litigation to stop them; the matter was further complicated by the Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Nintendo Co., Ltd. case where Universal Studios who claimed ownership over King Kong attempted to take action against Donkey Kong and its clones, notably the Tiger Electronics handheld electronic game King Kong , but
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#17330857640181716-606: A mobile game named Magic Survival . Another major area of concern for software clones arises within China. From 2000 to 2015, the Chinese government had numerous restrictions on imports of hardware and software, and access to non-Chinese storefronts. While this allowed gaming on personal computers to flourish within China, the cost of acquiring both hardware and software was too expensive for many, leading to Chinese developers to create low-cost clones of popular Western and Japanese titles for
1859-482: A nation that has domestic copyright laws or adheres to a bilateral treaty or established international convention such as the Berne Convention or WIPO Copyright Treaty . Improper use of materials outside of legislation is deemed "unauthorized edition", not copyright infringement. Statistics regarding the effects of copyright infringement are difficult to determine. Studies have attempted to determine whether there
2002-454: A number of clones appear on the App Store in early January, only to be removed in the wake of users criticizing the clone developers. The developers of Vampire Survivors fast-tracked the development of a mobile port of their game as a response to a number of clones that appeared on mobile app stores with stolen code and assets from the original game; Vampire Survivors itself was inspired by
2145-464: A perpetual license to the three patents and other technology sharing agreements, allowing them to continue to release their home version of Pong . This case was ultimately decided in Magnavox's favor against the remaining defendants in early 1977. However, just as with the arcade version, the home version of Pong drew a number of third-party hardware manufacturers to make Pong clones on the market, to
2288-521: A point where it was estimated that Atari's Pong console represented only about a third of sales of home Pong consoles. Magnavox continued to pursue action against these Pong clones using the three patents, estimated to have won over US$ 100 million in damages from suits and settlements through the lifetime of the patents. Threats of lawsuits did not prevent more clones of the home console systems from being built, as these dedicated consoles were relatively risk free and easy to manufacture. This led to
2431-454: A principle in copyright law known as the idea-expression distinction , that copyright does protect the idea for a game only the game's unique expression. In 1980, Namco released Pac-Man which became a massive commercial success, leading to the development of numerous Pac-Man clones . Between October 1980 and December 1981, the Pac-Man game alone generated $ 150 million in sales. Philips
2574-417: A product of an individual, with attendant rights. The most significant point is that patent and copyright laws support the expansion of the range of creative human activities that can be commodified. This parallels the ways in which capitalism led to the commodification of many aspects of social life that earlier had no monetary or economic value per se. Copyright has developed into a concept that has
2717-508: A proposal for his idea from his superiors, Baer worked with Sanders engineers Bill Harrison and Bill Rusch to execute its design while keeping it within a low cost target. By 1967, the optimized design was ready to be shopped to other manufacturers as Sanders was not in that market area. To protect the idea, Sanders applied for and received three patents in Baer's, Harrison's, and Rusch's names, covering their "television gaming apparatus"; this included
2860-411: A significant effect on nearly every modern industry, including not just literary work, but also forms of creative work such as sound recordings , films , photographs , software , and architecture . Often seen as the first real copyright law, the 1709 British Statute of Anne gave authors and the publishers to whom they did chose to license their works, the right to publish the author's creations for
3003-510: A similar form as the known console, but typically could only play built in games frequently on a liquid-crystal display (LCD). Other bootleg consoles would take the workings of older systems and repackage them in a newer housing that appears like the known consoles capable of playing the games from the original system. The latter was particularly true of consoles that attempted to clone the Nintendo Entertainment System (known as
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#17330857640183146-412: A single word is insufficient to comprise a copyright work. However, single words or a short string of words can sometimes be registered as a trademark instead. Copyright law recognizes the right of an author based on whether the work actually is an original creation , rather than based on whether it is unique ; two authors may own copyright on two substantially identical works, if it is determined that
3289-425: A storage carrying case and special AV cables unique to the system. There are no save features for high scores or game progress. Caplet comes in four colors: blue, silver, red, orange; and is powered by 3 AAA batteries. Early versions of the Caplet contain 35 games, with the current version having 50. Both units have the same outward appearance. The packaging of the unit is the only way to identify how many games are on
3432-518: A tangible medium of expression" to obtain copyright protection. US law requires that the fixation be stable and permanent enough to be "perceived, reproduced or communicated for a period of more than transitory duration". Similarly, Canadian courts consider fixation to require that the work be "expressed to some extent at least in some material form, capable of identification and having a more or less permanent endurance". Note this provision of US law: c) Effect of Berne Convention.—No right or interest in
3575-478: A very bright 2.5" backlit 320×240 TFT display (the package claims its resolution is 960×240, counting the RGB triads to make 3× the number of pixels). It is a 16-bit system that appears to utilize some form of arcade emulation, since the majority of its games are either direct ports or clones of arcade games. The unit has the capability of being displayed on any TV set with the purchase of a separate "starter kit" that includes
3718-599: A whole. A right to profit from the work has been the philosophical underpinning for much legislation extending the duration of copyright, to the life of the creator and beyond, to their heirs. Yet scholars like Lawrence Lessig have argued that copyright terms have been extended beyond the scope imagined by the Framers. Lessig refers to the Copyright Clause as the "Progress Clause" to emphasize the social dimension of intellectual property rights. The original length of copyright in
3861-610: A wide range of creative, intellectual, or artistic forms, or "works". Specifics vary by jurisdiction , but these can include poems , theses , fictional characters , plays and other literary works , motion pictures , choreography , musical compositions, sound recordings , paintings , drawings , sculptures , photographs , computer software , radio and television broadcasts , and industrial designs . Graphic designs and industrial designs may have separate or overlapping laws applied to them in some jurisdictions. Copyright does not cover ideas and information themselves, only
4004-528: A work eligible for protection under this title may be claimed by virtue of, or in reliance upon, the provisions of the Berne Convention, or the adherence of the United States thereto. Any rights in a work eligible for protection under this title that derive from this title, other Federal or State statutes, or the common law, shall not be expanded or reduced by virtue of, or in reliance upon, the provisions of
4147-552: A work must meet minimal standards of originality in order to qualify for copyright, and the copyright expires after a set period of time (some jurisdictions may allow this to be extended). Different countries impose different tests, although generally the requirements are low; in the United Kingdom there has to be some "skill, labour, and judgment" that has gone into it. In Australia and the United Kingdom it has been held that
4290-536: Is a clone of Blizzard Entertainment 's Hearthstone called Sleeping Dragon: Heroes of the Three Kingdoms created by Chinese developer Unico, released within a few months of Hearthstone 's beta release. Blizzard was ultimately successful in suing Unico for US$ 1.9 million in damages in 2014. In other cases, clones are made to address elements of the original game that are unsuitable under China's content restriction laws; for example, Tencent , which operated
4433-476: Is a monetary loss for industries affected by copyright infringement by predicting what portion of pirated works would have been formally purchased if they had not been freely available. Other reports indicate that copyright infringement does not have an adverse effect on the entertainment industry, and can have a positive effect. In particular, a 2014 university study concluded that free music content, accessed on YouTube , does not necessarily hurt sales, instead has
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4576-412: Is generally considered derogatory. True video game clones occur when competitors, on seeing the success of a video game title, attempt to compete by creating a near-copy of the existing game with similar assets and gameplay with little additional innovation; developer Jenova Chen compared the nature of these clones similar to plagiarism in which there is little attempt to distinguish the new work from
4719-510: Is not much of a resemblance. This version is more focused on racing games, and only has 30 to 40 games in it. Unlike the VG Pocket Max, both the Gamespower 50 and the plug n' play version lack a selection menu. The VG Pocket Caplet is a dedicated console created by Performance Designed Products. Its graphics are considered an improvement over those of the earlier models of the VG Pocket, with
4862-428: Is powered by 3 AAA batteries. The unit has a port that allows connectivity to television via standard analog RCA port. The cable was available with the purchase of a separate “starter kit” that includes a storage carrying case and AV hookup cables, but is not an uncommon cable, also used for portable DVD players. Games included are remakes or clones of classic arcade and 8-bit console games. Many reviewers have commented on
5005-523: The Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison test that clones that not only copy gameplay without excessive changes but also too much of the original game's look and feel were in violation of copyright law. This new approach gave developers a better means to fight against direct clones. Despite this, there has only been an incremental increase, with the courts applying this legal standard carefully to new cases. Legal scholars have argued that
5148-595: The Copyright Law in United States , the Copyright Office concluded that many diverse aspects of the current moral rights patchwork – including copyright law's derivative work right, state moral rights statutes, and contract law – are generally working well and should not be changed. Further, the Office concludes that there is no need for the creation of a blanket moral rights statute at this time. However, there are aspects of
5291-615: The European Union require their member states to comply with them. All member states of the World Trade Organization are obliged to establish minimum levels of copyright protection. Nevertheless, important differences between the national regimes continue to exist. The original holder of the copyright may be the employer of the author rather than the author themself if the work is a " work for hire ". For example, in English law
5434-528: The Internet , creating a much bigger threat to producer revenue. Some have used digital rights management technology to restrict non-playback access through encryption and other means. Digital watermarks can be used to trace copies, deterring infringement with a more credible threat of legal consequences. Copy protection is used for both digital and pre-Internet electronic media. For a work to be considered to infringe upon copyright, its use must have occurred in
5577-609: The Middle Ages in Europe, there was generally a lack of any concept of literary property due to the general relations of production, the specific organization of literary production and the role of culture in society. The latter refers to the tendency of oral societies, such as that of Europe in the medieval period, to view knowledge as the product and expression of the collective, rather than to see it as individual property. However, with copyright laws, intellectual production comes to be seen as
5720-483: The RIAA are increasingly targeting the file sharing home Internet user. Thus far, however, most such cases against file sharers have been settled out of court. ( See Legal aspects of file sharing ) In most jurisdictions the copyright holder must bear the cost of enforcing copyright. This will usually involve engaging legal representation, administrative or court costs. In light of this, many copyright disputes are settled by
5863-709: The United International Bureaux for the Protection of Intellectual Property signed the Rome Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organizations . In 1996, this organization was succeeded by the founding of the World Intellectual Property Organization , which launched the 1996 WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty and the 2002 WIPO Copyright Treaty , which enacted greater restrictions on
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6006-444: The abstraction test to find that Munchkin had in fact copied the unique expression of Pac-Man , particularly the character design . As a result of Atari's successful motion, Philips was legally barred from selling K.C. Munchkin . Courts later barred other clones of Pac-Man, including Packri-Monster by Bandai , Puckman by Artic International, and another similar game called Mighty Mouth . Siva Vaidhyanathan suggests that
6149-442: The auto battler genre by mid-2019. Another type of clone arose from developers in the modding , open source , and indie game communities, where these developers seek to recreate the mechanics of a popular title through reverse engineering , sometimes using their own original assets, and releasing the game typically for free and in homage to the original title. This allows the teams and users to expand upon original elements of
6292-624: The fair use doctrine in the United States and fair dealings doctrine in the United Kingdom. Some jurisdictions require "fixing" copyrighted works in a tangible form. It is often shared among multiple authors, each of whom holds a set of rights to use or license the work, and who are commonly referred to as rights holders. These rights normally include reproduction, control over derivative works , distribution, public performance , and moral rights such as attribution. Copyrights can be granted by public law and are in that case considered "territorial rights". This means that copyrights granted by
6435-503: The idea–expression distinction , that one cannot copyright the underlying gameplay but can copyright a specific implementation of it. Case law until 2012 has generally favorable to clones, often ruling that clones of a game do not violate copyright since they meet scènes à faire principle, elements necessary for a specific theme of a game. However, in two separate U.S. cases in 2012, Tetris Holding, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc. and Spry Fox, LLC v. Lolapps, Inc. , courts found using
6578-636: The 1974 reissued U.S. Patent RE28,507 for a "television gaming apparatus", U.S. Patent 3,659,285 for a "television gaming apparatus and method", and U.S. Patent 3,728,480 for a "television gaming and training apparatus". Sanders eventually licensed the technology and the patents to Magnavox , which used it to make the Magnavox Odyssey , released in 1972. In 1974, Magnavox sued several companies on patent infringement for creating and distributing table-tennis arcade games including Atari and Midway. Atari settled in 1976 and agreed to pay Magnavox US$ 1,500,000 for
6721-409: The 1976 Copyright Act to conform to most of the provisions of the Berne Convention. As a result, the use of copyright notices has become optional to claim copyright, because the Berne Convention makes copyright automatic. However, the lack of notice of copyright using these marks may have consequences in terms of reduced damages in an infringement lawsuit – using notices of this form may reduce
6864-446: The Berne Convention, or the adherence of the United States thereto. Before 1989, United States law required the use of a copyright notice, consisting of the copyright symbol (©, the letter C inside a circle; Unicode U+00A9 © COPYRIGHT SIGN ), the abbreviation "Copr.", or the word "Copyright", followed by the year of the first publication of the work and the name of the copyright holder. Several years may be noted if
7007-433: The Berne Convention. As soon as a work is "fixed", that is, written or recorded on some physical medium, its author is automatically entitled to all intellectual property rights in the work, and to any derivative works unless and until the author explicitly disclaims them, or until the rights expires. The Berne Convention also resulted in foreign authors being treated equivalently to domestic authors, in any country signed onto
7150-561: The CEO of Allied Leisure had said in 1974 that "th[e] video game is yesterday's newspaper". The settlement was also likely due to pressure from the patent issues that had arisen around the home versions of Pong in the first generation of consoles that were occurring simultaneously. The base ideas of a home video game console were developed by Ralph H. Baer while working at Sanders Associates , where in 1966 he began work on what ultimately became his "Brown Box" prototype. After securing approval of
7293-408: The Chinese market, which persist today. Foreign companies are faced with difficulties in seeking legal action against the Chinese developers that have created these clones, making cloning a far less risky process. Thus, it is common for popular games from both Western and Japanese markets to see near-exact clones appear within China, often within weeks of the original game's release. A notable example
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#17330857640187436-604: The Consent of the Authors ;... to their very great Detriment, and too often to the Ruin of them and their Families:". A right to benefit financially from the work is articulated, and court rulings and legislation have recognized a right to control the work, such as ensuring that the integrity of it is preserved. An irrevocable right to be recognized as the work's creator appears in some countries' copyright laws. The Copyright Clause of
7579-523: The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 provides that if a copyrighted work is made by an employee in the course of that employment, the copyright is automatically owned by the employer which would be a "Work for Hire". Typically, the first owner of a copyright is the person who created the work i.e. the author . But when more than one person creates the work, then a case of joint authorship can be made provided some criteria are met. Copyright may apply to
7722-633: The Famicom system in Japan), which was not available in some countries in the Eastern European and Chinese regions, leading manufacturers within those nations to make numerous bootleg versions , knowing that it would be near-impossible for Nintendo to seek legal action against them. Closed consoles were not the only cloned systems. The ZX Spectrum had been released in the United Kingdom in 1982 and its low cost compared to other home computers helped give birth to
7865-578: The Statute of Anne. While the national law protected authors' published works, authority was granted to the states to protect authors' unpublished works. The most recent major overhaul of copyright in the US, the 1976 Copyright Act , extended federal copyright to works as soon as they are created and "fixed", without requiring publication or registration. State law continues to apply to unpublished works that are not otherwise copyrighted by federal law. This act also changed
8008-485: The Templars . For cloning of original indie games by other indie developers, while such practices do exist, indie developers tend to rely on an informal code of honor to shun those who do engage in cloning. Clones may also be used as commentary or parody of the original game, usually in a manner considered transformative to qualify as fair use . Pyst is a parody of the adventure game Myst , taking place on seemingly
8151-652: The U.S. economy at least $ 29.2 billion in lost revenue each year." An August 2021 report by the Digital Citizens Alliance states that "online criminals who offer stolen movies, TV shows, games, and live events through websites and apps are reaping $ 1.34 billion in annual advertising revenues." This comes as a result of users visiting pirate websites who are then subjected to pirated content, malware, and fraud. According to World Intellectual Property Organisation , copyright protects two types of rights. Economic rights allow right owners to derive financial reward from
8294-524: The US. The Berne International Copyright Convention of 1886 finally provided protection for authors among the countries who signed the agreement, although the US did not join the Berne Convention until 1989. In the US, the Constitution grants Congress the right to establish copyright and patent laws. Shortly after the Constitution was passed, Congress enacted the Copyright Act of 1790 , modeling it after
8437-495: The Union to prescribe that works in general or any specified categories of works shall not be protected unless they have been fixed in some material form." Some countries do not require that a work be produced in a particular form to obtain copyright protection. For instance, Spain, France, and Australia do not require fixation for copyright protection. The United States and Canada, on the other hand, require that most works must be "fixed in
8580-634: The United States was 14 years, and it had to be explicitly applied for. If the author wished, they could apply for a second 14‑year monopoly grant, but after that the work entered the public domain , so it could be used and built upon by others. In many jurisdictions of the European continent, comparable legal concepts to copyright did exist from the 16th century on but did change under Napoleonic rule into another legal concept: authors' rights or creator's right laws, from French: droits d'auteur and German Urheberrecht . In many modern-day publications
8723-515: The United States, Constitution (1787) authorized copyright legislation: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." That is, by guaranteeing them a period of time in which they alone could profit from their works, they would be enabled and encouraged to invest the time required to create them, and this would be good for society as
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#17330857640188866-402: The argument that had previously been used to thwart their 1988 lawsuit against Epyx, that none of the elements that were similar to Capcom's Street Fighter were protectable under copyright. The court noted the similarities between several moves and characters, but insisted "that the vast majority of the moves are unprotectable because they are commonplace kicks and punches". Capcom U.S.A. lost
9009-407: The authors even after the authors have transferred their economic rights. In some EU countries, such as France, moral rights last indefinitely. In the UK, however, moral rights are finite. That is, the right of attribution and the right of integrity last only as long as the work is in copyright. When the copyright term comes to an end, so too do the moral rights in that work. This is just one reason why
9152-468: The authors even after the authors have transferred their economic rights. This means that even where, for example, a film producer or publisher owns the economic rights in a work, in many jurisdictions the individual author continues to have moral rights. Recently, as a part of the debates being held at the US Copyright Office on the question of inclusion of Moral Rights as a part of the framework of
9295-526: The blocks changing in color when they land, and the game board filling up when the game is over. In weighing these arguments, Wolfson noted that Mino copied Tetris much more closely than a game like Dr. Mario , a game that utilized the rules of Tetris to express a similar idea in a unique and non-infringing way. Legal and industry experts agreed this signalled that United States courts were becoming more willing to grant broader video games for specific visual arrangements. Though copyright would not limit
9438-696: The calculation of copyright term from a fixed term (then a maximum of fifty-six years) to "life of the author plus 50 years". These changes brought the US closer to conformity with the Berne Convention, and in 1989 the United States further revised its copyright law and joined the Berne Convention officially. Copyright laws allow products of creative human activities, such as literary and artistic production, to be preferentially exploited and thus incentivized. Different cultural attitudes, social organizations, economic models and legal frameworks are seen to account for why copyright emerged in Europe and not, for example, in Asia. In
9581-459: The case of Midway, Atari providing Midway with a licensed Pong design that Midway released as Winner . One of those companies that had copied Pong was Allied Leisure, which had released its Paddle Battle arcade game in early 1973. When the market shifted from the two-player to four-player table tennis versions in mid-1973, Allied Leisure produced two new arcade games, Tennis Tourney and Ric-o-chet , both which Midway stated caused demand for
9724-594: The case of Zynga's Mafia Wars , which was accused of cloning David Maestri's Mob Wars ). In August 2012, Electronic Arts (EA), via its Maxis division, put forth a lawsuit against Zynga, claiming that its Facebook game, The Ville was a ripoff of EA's own Facebook game, The Sims Social . The lawsuit challenges that The Ville not only copies the gameplay mechanics of The Sims Social , but also uses art and visual interface aspects that appear to be inspired by The Sims Social . Pundits have noted that EA, unlike these previous developers, are financially backed to see
9867-401: The case on grounds that the copied elements were excluded from copyright protection, as generic scènes à faire. The case was one of several that made it difficult for a copyright holder to win a lawsuit against an alleged clone, and also allowed game genres to develop based on imitation and iteration. Many game mechanics from Street Fighter II became common to the genre, as well as aspects of
10010-463: The case to completion; EA themselves have stated in the lawsuit that "Maxis isn't the first studio to claim that Zynga copied its creative product. But we are the studio that has the financial and corporate resources to stand up and do something about it". The two companies settled out of court on undisclosed terms in February 2013. According to Brian Reynolds , the former lead gameplay designer at Zynga,
10153-528: The cloner take corrective actions. Cloning of video games came early in the arcade video game industry shortly after the release of Pong by Atari in 1972. Its success led to numerous companies buying a copy of the arcade machine to try to make their own versions. Atari's Nolan Bushnell called these vendors "jackals", but took no legal action and instead focused on making new games to try to outpace them. Bushnell also maintained contractual agreements with Bally Manufacturing and Midway Manufacturing ; in
10296-853: The commercial game, such as software bugs that were not fixed, improving gameplay concepts, support for different and newer computers or console platforms, or adding new ideas to the base gameplay principles, as well as easing game extensions through user-created mods or add-ons. Some examples of these clones include Freeciv based on the Civilization series, Osu! based on Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan , and Frets on Fire based on Guitar Hero . The open source nature of these clones also enable new utilities, such as developing artificial intelligence agents that have learned and improved their play in Freeciv which in turn can help advance artificial intelligence research. Such games must be careful not to redistribute
10439-417: The company sees potential new genres and game ideas that gain popularity, and then strive to add their own innovation and concepts to at, so that "[their] goal is to have the highest-quality thing". In 2009, Xio Interactive released a mobile game called Mino that was based on the gameplay of Tetris , with the belief that their game did not include any legally-protected elements. The game Mino featured
10582-431: The concept of building atop gameplay concepts from other developers to make novel games, but avoiding outright copying element for element as to make a direct clone. Broadly, video games lack a fixed medium, and fall into the same area as software copyright where underlying source code as well as art and other assets qualify for copyright, but the gameplay does not. In the United States specifically, video games fall into
10725-454: The concepts throughout the years have been mingled globally, due to international treaties and contracts, distinct differences between jurisdictions continue to exist. Creator's law was enacted rather late in German speaking states and the economic historian Eckhard Höffner argues that the absence of possibilities to maintain copyright laws in all these states in the early 19th century, encouraged
10868-474: The convention. The UK signed the Berne Convention in 1887 but did not implement large parts of it until 100 years later with the passage of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 . Specially, for educational and scientific research purposes, the Berne Convention provides the developing countries issue compulsory licenses for the translation or reproduction of copyrighted works within the limits prescribed by
11011-590: The convention. This was a special provision that had been added at the time of 1971 revision of the convention, because of the strong demands of the developing countries. The United States did not sign the Berne Convention until 1989. The United States and most Latin American countries instead entered into the Buenos Aires Convention in 1910, which required a copyright notice on the work (such as all rights reserved ), and permitted signatory nations to limit
11154-481: The copyright holder is entitled to enforce their exclusive rights. However, while registration is not needed to exercise copyright, in jurisdictions where the laws provide for registration, it serves as prima facie evidence of a valid copyright and enables the copyright holder to seek statutory damages and attorney's fees. (In the US, registering after an infringement only enables one to receive actual damages and lost profits.) A widely circulated strategy to avoid
11297-561: The copyright holder reserves, or holds for their own use was once required to assert copyright, but that phrase is now legally obsolete. Almost everything on the Internet has some sort of copyright attached to it. Whether these things are watermarked, signed, or have any other sort of indication of the copyright is a different story however. In 1989 the United States enacted the Berne Convention Implementation Act , amending
11440-477: The cost of copyright registration is referred to as the poor man's copyright . It proposes that the creator send the work to themself in a sealed envelope by registered mail, using the postmark to establish the date. This technique has not been recognized in any published opinions of the United States courts. The United States Copyright Office says the technique is not a substitute for actual registration. The United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office discusses
11583-547: The court also noted that several aspects of the games were standard or common, and thus not protected by copyright. By the late 1980s, courts began to take a more permissive approach with video game clones, deciding that many elements of creativity cannot be protected, such as generic concepts, functional rules, and scènes à faire . One such ruling was the 1988 case Data East USA, Inc. v. Epyx, Inc. , where courts ruled that Epyx's game World Karate Championship did not infringe Data East's game Karate Champ , because none of
11726-454: The court determined that the idea of a vertically falling block game could not be protected by copyright, they determined that Tetris did have many unique elements making it eligible for copyright protection, including its twenty-by-ten square game board, the display of randomized junk blocks at the start of the game, the display of a block's "shadow" where it will land, and the display of the next piece to fall. Wolfson also granted protection to
11869-533: The court ruled in Nintendo's favor along with ordering Tiger to pay damages to Nintendo. BYTE reported in December 1981 that at least eight clones of Atari 's arcade game Asteroids existed for personal computers. The magazine stated in December 1982 that that year "few games broke new ground in either design or format ... If the public really likes an idea, it is milked for all it's worth, and numerous clones of
12012-408: The creator dies, depending on the jurisdiction . Some countries require certain copyright formalities to establishing copyright, others recognize copyright in any completed work, without a formal registration. When the copyright of a work expires, it enters the public domain . The concept of copyright developed after the printing press came into use in Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries. It
12155-416: The duplication was coincidental, and neither was copied from the other. In all countries where the Berne Convention standards apply, copyright is automatic, and need not be obtained through official registration with any government office. Once an idea has been reduced to tangible form, for example by securing it in a fixed medium (such as a drawing, sheet music, photograph, a videotape, or a computer file),
12298-517: The duration of copyrights to shorter and renewable terms. The Universal Copyright Convention was drafted in 1952 as another less demanding alternative to the Berne Convention, and ratified by nations such as the Soviet Union and developing nations. The regulations of the Berne Convention are incorporated into the World Trade Organization 's TRIPS agreement (1995), thus giving the Berne Convention effectively near-global application. In 1961,
12441-482: The early 1980s included Space Invaders (1978), Pac-Man (1980) and Donkey Kong (1981), clones of which were available for various different platforms by 1983. Clones and variants numbered in the hundreds for Space Invaders and Pac-Man , more than a hundred for Frogger , and dozens for Donkey Kong . They were programmed by professional and amateur coders for platforms ranging from desktop microcomputers to graphing calculators . Nintendo estimated
12584-560: The end of the 1980s, courts had ruled in favor of a few alleged clones, and the high costs of a lawsuit meant that most disputes with alleged clones were ignored or settled through to the mid-2000s. In 2012, courts ruled against alleged clones in both Tetris Holding, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc. and Spry Fox, LLC v. Lolapps, Inc. , due to explicit similarities between the games' expressive elements. Legal scholars agree that these cases establish that general game ideas, game mechanics, and stock scenes cannot be protected by copyright – only
12727-423: The exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work , usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself. A copyright is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as
12870-682: The exogenous differential introduction of author's right (Italian: diritto d’autore ) in Napoleonic Italy shows that "basic copyrights increased both the number and the quality of operas, measured by their popularity and durability". The 1886 Berne Convention first established recognition of authors' rights among sovereign nations , rather than merely bilaterally. Under the Berne Convention, protective rights for creative works do not have to be asserted or declared, as they are automatically in force at creation: an author need not "register" or "apply for" these protective rights in countries adhering to
13013-635: The fighting game Mortal Kombat . With the costs of filing a lawsuit being very high compared to the expected outcome, many video game copyright holders became hesitant to sue alleged clones. Most lawsuits about alleged clones were settled between the mid-1990s through to the mid-2000s. The success of the 1993 game Myst led to a number of similar 3D adventure games, which were sometimes labeled as "Myst clones". Some video game genres are founded by archetypal games of which all subsequent similar games are considered derivatives; notably, early first-person shooters were often called " Doom clones", while
13156-400: The first clone was released 21 days after Threes! and the original was quickly overshadowed by 2048 , a clone that was developed over a weekend. While 2048 had been originally published freely and under an open-source license, Ketchapp developed an ad-supported version of 2048 that charted on the App Store. Following its sudden rise to popularity at the start of 2022, Wordle saw
13299-418: The form or manner in which they are expressed. For example, the copyright to a Mickey Mouse cartoon restricts others from making copies of the cartoon or creating derivative works based on Disney's particular anthropomorphic mouse, but does not prohibit the creation of other works about anthropomorphic mice in general, so long as they are different enough not to be judged copies of Disney's. Typically,
13442-428: The format gained popularity; the low cost, ease and simplicity of the tools needed to develop these made cloning in that sector a significant problem. For example, Flappy Bird had been cloned dozens of times due to programming code clearinghouses offering templated code to which others could easily add their own art assets. The creators of Threes! spent 14 months developing the game and tuning its mechanics, but
13585-421: The game and rush to make a clone of the game, either as a new arcade game or for home consoles; an occurrence which happened with Missile Command in 1980. This ultimately diluted the market for new arcade games. An early legal question was whether video games were even eligible for intellectual property protection, as both industry and legal experts were unclear on whether copyright law applied. One such game
13728-463: The game copyright protection, and courts sided with Atari that even simple video games could become copyrightable works, as they were both fixed and original expression. Midway sued Artic for making Puckman , an alleged clone of Pac-Man , with Artic responding that video games were not "fixed in any tangible medium of expression" and thus ineligible for copyright. Courts sided with Midway that aspects of an arcade game were copyrightable, even though
13871-456: The high costs of a legal dispute combined with the specific facts of each alleged clone have made these cases difficult to predict, and thus it is still rare that they proceed to trial. Wired compared a history of these rulings both for and against infringement, and described the idea-expression distinction – that copyright law won't protect an idea, only its expression – as "simple to state" but "difficult to apply". Patents have been used in
14014-504: The holder in a civil law court, but there are also criminal infringement statutes in some jurisdictions. While central registries are kept in some countries which aid in proving claims of ownership, registering does not necessarily prove ownership, nor does the fact of copying (even without permission) necessarily prove that copyright was infringed. Criminal sanctions are generally aimed at serious counterfeiting activity, but are now becoming more commonplace as copyright collectives such as
14157-427: The images that appeared on the screen were transient. Stern Electronics, Inc. v. Kaufman similarly decided that the look and feel of a game was fixed, and thus copyrightable, despite differences in the images between different player playthroughs. Thus, it became widely established that video games were eligible for copyright protection, against potentially infringing clones. The most widely cloned arcade games in
14300-553: The imitation of standard game elements, this decision would have the greatest impact on games that copied exact shapes and colors. In 2012, Spry Fox, LLC v. Lolapps, Inc. was heard in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington , brought by Spry Fox against developer Lolapps over their game Yeti Town which Spry Fox claimed was a copyright-infringing clone of Triple Town . At
14443-634: The incomes of many academics. Printing brought profound social changes . The rise in literacy across Europe led to a dramatic increase in the demand for reading matter. Prices of reprints were low, so publications could be bought by poorer people, creating a mass audience. In German-language markets before the advent of copyright, technical materials, like popular fiction, were inexpensive and widely available; it has been suggested this contributed to Germany's industrial and economic success. The concept of copyright first developed in England . In reaction to
14586-665: The initial hearings, the judge followed similar logic used in the Xio case to order a preliminary injunction in favor of Spry Fox, as Yeti Town had the same look-and-feel as Triple Town when simply viewed side by side. The case was subsequently settled out of court, with Spry Fox gaining ownership of the Yeti Town property by the end of 2012. Since these cases in 2012, legal scholars have found that courts have been more scrutinizing of look-and-feel in cases involving video game clones. Clones of social and mobile games have continued to flourish as
14729-406: The judge failed to agree to a preliminary injunction, ruling that while a drawing of the printed circuit board may have copyright protection, the physical board itself would not and instead would be covered by patents, which were not involved in this case. The case was settled out of court in 1974 for undisclosed terms, believed due to factors relating to a short downturn in the market, as David Braun,
14872-416: The law of a certain state do not extend beyond the territory of that specific jurisdiction. Copyrights of this type vary by country; many countries, and sometimes a large group of countries, have made agreements with other countries on procedures applicable when works "cross" national borders or national rights are inconsistent. Typically, the public law duration of a copyright expires 50 to 100 years after
15015-487: The legally recognised rights and interests of others. Most copyright laws state that authors or other right owners have the right to authorise or prevent certain acts in relation to a work. Right owners can authorise or prohibit: Moral rights are concerned with the non-economic rights of a creator. They protect the creator's connection with a work as well as the integrity of the work. Moral rights are only accorded to individual authors and in many national laws they remain with
15158-429: The likelihood of a defense of "innocent infringement" being successful. In the UK, the publisher of a work automatically owns the copyright in the "typographical arrangement of a published work", i.e. its layout and general appearance as a published work. This copyright lasts for 25 years after the end of the year in which the edition containing that arrangement was first published. Copyrights are generally enforced by
15301-607: The moral rights regime within the UK is often regarded as weaker or inferior to the protection of moral rights in continental Europe and elsewhere in the world. The Berne Convention, in Article 6bis, requires its members to grant authors the following rights: These and other similar rights granted in national laws are generally known as the moral rights of authors. The Berne Convention requires these rights to be independent of authors' economic rights. Moral rights are only accorded to individual authors and in many national laws they remain with
15444-497: The original developer is well known, protects their game assets on release, and gets the credit for the original game. Valve , which operates the Steam digital storefront for games on personal computers, also takes steps to remove games that are clearly copyright-infringing clones of other titles on the service, once notified of the issue. Copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner
15587-579: The original game assets when the rights owners release the game as freeware, as did OpenRA , a Command & Conquer: Red Alert clone. It even incorporated code from the original game after Electronic Arts re-licensed it under the GPL later, as was the case for many game engines in ScummVM , which subsequently has been used for official re-releases by numerous companies, starting with Revolution Software 's Sold Out label budget release of Broken Sword: The Shadow of
15730-445: The original game's assets or they could face legal issues. OpenSC2K , an open-source recreation of SimCity 2000 , was shut down by Electronic Arts after it was found that OpenSC2K used assets from SimCity 2000 . Some projects that started as reverse engineered game engine recreations , faithful enough to directly use separately acquired assets from the original game by players who own it, may later become game clones by including
15873-727: The original game. An additional motivation unique to the medium of games as software with limited compatibility , is the desire to port a simulacrum of a game to platforms that the original is unavailable for or unsatisfactorily implemented on. The legality of video game clones is governed by copyright and patent law. In the 1970s, Magnavox controlled several patents to the hardware for Pong , and pursued action against unlicensed Pong clones that led to court rulings in their favor, as well as legal settlements for compensation. As game production shifted to software on discs and cartridges, Atari sued Philips under copyright law , allowing them to shut down several clones of Pac-Man . By
16016-517: The original. Video game clones are seen by those developing them as low risk; knowing that a game or genre is popular, developing a clone of that game would appear to be a safe and quick investment, in contrast with developing a new title with unknown sales potential. Further, cloning of games from smaller developers, particularly indie developers , is more frequent as these small teams lack the financial resources to pursue legal recourse. Instead, these teams often appeal to social influence to try to have
16159-424: The owner's permission, often through a license. The owner's use of the property must, however, respect the legally recognised rights and interests of other members of society. So the owner of a copyright-protected work may decide how to use the work, and may prevent others from using it without permission. National laws usually grant copyright owners exclusive rights to allow third parties to use their works, subject to
16302-413: The popularity of social and mobile game stores like Apple's App Store for iOS system and Google Play for Android-based systems, a large number of likely-infringing clones have begun appearing. While such storefronts typically include a review process before games and apps can be offered on them, these processes do not consider copyright infringement of other titles. Instead, they rely on the developer of
16445-588: The potential to increase sales. According to the IP Commission Report the annual cost of intellectual property infringement to the US economy "continues to exceed $ 225 billion in counterfeit goods, pirated software, and theft of trade secrets and could be as high as $ 600 billion." A 2019 study sponsored by the US Chamber of Commerce Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC), in partnership with NERA Economic Consulting "estimates that global online piracy costs
16588-826: The printing of "scandalous books and pamphlets", the English Parliament passed the Licensing of the Press Act 1662 , which required all intended publications to be registered with the government-approved Stationers' Company , giving the Stationers the right to regulate what material could be printed. The Statute of Anne , enacted in 1710 in England and Scotland, provided the first legislation to protect copyrights (but not authors' rights). The Copyright Act of 1814 extended more rights for authors but did not protect British from reprinting in
16731-462: The publishing of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds in China, was forced to pull the game due to content related to violence and terrorism, and instead replaced it with a clone, Game for Peace , which otherwise reused assets from Battlegrounds but removed blood and gore. Video game clones are generally difficult to prevent through intellectual property laws such as copyright , patents , or trademarks . The game industry has generally been built on
16874-440: The publishing of low-priced paperbacks for the masses. This was profitable for authors and led to a proliferation of books, enhanced knowledge, and was ultimately an important factor in the ascendency of Germany as a power during that century. After the introduction of creator's rights, German publishers started to follow English customs, in issuing only expensive book editions for wealthy customers. Empirical evidence derived from
17017-556: The ruling had a chilling effect on competition for Pac-Man , despite the court stating that copyright did not control the idea of a maze-chase game . Jerry Pournelle wrote in 1984 that "Atari bought itself about a million dollars worth of unfavorable publicity by bullying some very nice teen-aged programmers; surely they could have been smoother about it". The Atari v. Philips decision established that video game clones could be held liable for copying other games, because K.C. Munchkin! had substantial similarities to Pac-Man . However,
17160-469: The same approach of using falling tetromino blocks to form complete lines on a playfield and score points. Mino also added new power-ups and game modes to the basic Tetris gameplay. While there had been many Tetris clones over the years, Mino was eventually downloaded more than six million times, culminating in The Tetris Company filing a lawsuit against Xio Interactive in December 2009. While
17303-463: The same island as Myst but vandalized by numerous groups. Hatetris became a variant of Tetris where the next tetranomial provided is the worst possible for the current board. New concerns related to cloned video games came with the rise of social network and mobile games , typically which were offered as freemium titles to entice new players to play. The rising popularity of these games with casual players led to widespread clones. Zynga
17446-524: The similarities were protected under copyright. This was based on the idea that the general gameplay of a martial arts game was an idea that was free for anyone to use, and could not be protected by copyright as unique expression. In 1991, game developer Capcom released Street Fighter II . Its popularity led to an explosion of interest in the fighting game genre . Other companies rushed to capitalize, and Data East released their own one-on-one fighting game called Fighter's History in 1994. As it
17589-430: The software of games were subsequently used in unlicensed copies for other systems. Cloning of arcade video games was popular during the arcade's " golden age " in the early 1980s. Arcade games, prior to mass production, were made in limited numbers for field testing in public spaces; once news got out that a new arcade game from industry leaders like Atari was out in the open, third-party competitors would be able to scope
17732-435: The storage medium. The equivalent for digital online content is a paywall . The introduction of the photocopier , cassette tape , and videotape made it easier for consumers to copy materials like books and music, but each time a copy was made, it lost some fidelity. Digital media like text, audio, video, and software (even when stored on physical media like compact discs and DVDs ) can be copied losslessly, and shared on
17875-661: The success of the open-world formula in Grand Theft Auto led to the genre of GTA clones . The genre of endless runners is based on the success and simplicity of the game Canabalt . Such cloning can also cause a relatively-sudden emergence of a new genre as developers attempt to capitalize on the interest. The battle royale genre grew rapidly after the success of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and Fortnite Battle Royale across 2017 and 2018, while Dota Auto Chess released in January 2019 spawned several commercial games in
18018-431: The surprising quality of the console's screen. Video game clone A video game clone is either a video game or a video game console very similar to, or heavily inspired by, a previous popular game or console. Clones are typically made to take financial advantage of the popularity of the cloned game or system, but clones may also result from earnest attempts to create homages or expand on game mechanics from
18161-434: The system without turning on the unit. The unit initially retailed for $ 40. The VG Pocket Tablet is a portable handheld video gaming system created by PDP in 2006. The console is self-contained, as there is no cartridge slot, but rather it is pre-loaded with 25 games. It initially sold for $ 29.99. It has a round tablet-shaped design in four colors: orange, green, red, and white; a very bright 2” backlit 640×240 TFT display; and
18304-408: The technique and notes that the technique (as well as commercial registries) does not constitute dispositive proof that the work is original or establish who created the work. The Berne Convention allows member countries to decide whether creative works must be "fixed" to enjoy copyright. Article 2, Section 2 of the Berne Convention states: "It shall be a matter for legislation in the countries of
18447-555: The term may be used to make a comparison between games. As copyright law does not protect game mechanics , the reuse of such ideas is generally considered acceptable. For example, Grand Theft Auto III spurred a number of games that have been called GTA clones but which are not direct copies of assets or mechanical ideas. In these cases, games that are "clones" of another are generally not implied to have committed any intellectual property infractions, and otherwise considered legally acceptable practices, although calling such games clones
18590-402: The terms copyright and authors' rights are being mixed, or used as translations, but in a juridical sense the legal concepts do essentially differ. Authors' rights are, generally speaking, from the start absolute property rights of an author of original work that one does not have to apply for. The law is automatically connecting an original work as intellectual property to its creator. Although
18733-425: The two parties together to try to negotiate prior to action. While Apple, Google, and Microsoft took steps to stem the mass of clones based on Swing Copters after its release, experts believe it is unlikely that these app stores will institute any type of proactive clone protection outside of clear copyright violations, and these experts stress the matter is better done by the developers and gaming community to assure
18876-477: The two-player Winner to drop dramatically. To stay competitive, Midway acquired one of Allied's games to compare the printed circuit board to that from Winner as to determine what was the new components for making it a four-player game, and added that to Winner 's board, and released as Winner IV . Allied Leisure filed suit against Midway claiming copyright infringement of using its printed circuit board design in making Winner IV and unfair competition, but
19019-452: The unique expression of those ideas. However, the high cost of a lawsuit combined with the fact-specific nature of each dispute has made it difficult to predict which game developers can protect their games' look and feel from clones. Other methods like patents, trademarks, and industry regulation have played a role in shaping the prevalence of clones. 'Adaptation' is such a flattering word. So much nicer than 'copyright infringement' Cloning
19162-453: The use of technology to copy works in the nations that ratified it. The Trans-Pacific Partnership includes intellectual property provisions relating to copyright. Copyright laws and authors' right laws are standardized somewhat through these international conventions such as the Berne Convention and Universal Copyright Convention. These multilateral treaties have been ratified by nearly all countries, and international organizations such as
19305-459: The use of their works by others. Moral rights allow authors and creators to take certain actions to preserve and protect their link with their work. The author or creator may be the owner of the economic rights or those rights may be transferred to one or more copyright owners. Many countries do not allow the transfer of moral rights. With any kind of property, its owner may decide how it is to be used, and others can use it lawfully only if they have
19448-567: The video game sector in the UK as well as Western Europe. The system could not be imported into the Eastern bloc countries, but enterprising companies found ways to clone the ZX Spectrum hardware at even lower cost. With teenagers and young adults able to afford these hardware clones, they too were able to begin developing their own games and helped to launch the video game industry within these countries. While hardware itself became difficult to clone,
19591-445: The work has gone through substantial revisions. The proper copyright notice for sound recordings of musical or other audio works is a sound recording copyright symbol (℗, the letter P inside a circle, Unicode U+2117 ℗ SOUND RECORDING COPYRIGHT ), which indicates a sound recording copyright, with the letter P indicating a " phonorecord ". In addition, the phrase All rights reserved which indicates that
19734-410: The work that has been cloned to initiate a complaint regarding the clone, which may take time for review. The cloned apps often are purposely designed to resemble other popular apps by name or feel, luring away purchasers from the legitimate app, even after complaints have been filed. Apple has released a tool to streamline claims of app clones to a team dedicated to handle these cases, helping to bring
19877-459: Was Breakout , which inspired many games, including Arkanoid , which itself inspired many other clones. When Atari decided to register its Copyright in Breakout , Register of Copyrights Ralph Oman refused to register the work because it "did not contain at least a minimum amount of original pictorial or graphic authorship, or authorship in sounds". Atari challenged Oman's decision not to award
20020-436: Was associated with a common law and rooted in the civil law system. The printing press made it much cheaper to produce works, but as there was initially no copyright law, anyone could buy or rent a press and print any text. Popular new works were immediately re- set and re-published by competitors, so printers needed a constant stream of new material. Fees paid to authors for new works were high, and significantly supplemented
20163-426: Was later revealed, Data East created design documents that referred to Street Fighter II several times. Several people noticed the similarities and raised the issue with Capcom, reaching the president, Kenzo Tsujimoto . Capcom soon sued Data East for copyright infringements, in both America and Japan. Capcom also sought a preliminary injunction to stop Data East from distributing Fighter's History . Data East used
20306-504: Was one of several developers who attempted to create their own maze game, resulting in K.C. Munchkin! released in 1981. Atari sued Philips in Atari, Inc. v. North American Philips Consumer Electronics Corp. , claiming that the game K.C. Munchkin! had illegally copied their game Pac-Man . The court initially refused Atari ' s motion to bar the sales of Munchkin , but Atari succeeded on appeal, with Judge Harlington Wood applying
20449-425: Was one of the first major developers in social network games, and had long been criticized by the video game industry as cloning popular social and casual games from other developers, includes those of smaller developers without the resources to fight back in courts (as in the case of Tiny Tower by NimbleBit , which Zynga has cloned in their game, Dream Heights ) or that are willing to settle out of court (as in
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