Asteroids is a space-themed multidirectional shooter arcade video game designed by Lyle Rains and Ed Logg released in November 1979 by Atari, Inc. The player controls a single spaceship in an asteroid field which is periodically traversed by flying saucers. The object of the game is to shoot and destroy the asteroids and saucers, while not colliding with either, or being hit by the saucers' counter-fire. The game becomes harder as the number of asteroids increases.
The idea–expression distinction or idea–expression dichotomy is a legal doctrine in the United States that limits the scope of copyright protection by differentiating an idea from the expression or manifestation of that idea.
Midway Games Inc., known previously as Midway Manufacturing and Bally Midway, and commonly known as simply Midway, was an American video game developer and publisher. Midway's franchises included Mortal Kombat, Rampage, Spy Hunter, NBA Jam, Cruis'n, and NFL Blitz. Midway also acquired the rights to video games that were originally developed by Williams Electronics and Atari Games, such as Defender, Joust, Robotron: 2084, Gauntlet, and the Rush series.
K.C. Munchkin!, released in Europe as Munchkin, is a maze game for the Magnavox Odyssey 2. Its North American title is an inside reference to then president of Philips Consumer Electronics, Kenneth C. Menkin.
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 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.
Stern Electronics Inc. v. Kaufman, 669 F.2d 852, is a legal case in which the United States Court of Appeals Second Circuit held that Omni Video Games violated the copyright and trademark of Scramble, an arcade game marketed by Stern Electronics. The lawsuit was due to a trend of "knock-off" video games in the early 1980s, leading to one of the earliest findings of copyright infringement for a video game, and the first federal appellate court to recognize a video game as a copyrighted audiovisual work.
Space Race is an arcade game developed by Atari, Inc. and released on July 16, 1973. It was the second game by the company, after Pong (1972), which marked the beginning of the commercial video game industry. In the game, two players each control a rocket ship, with the goal of being the first to move their ship from the bottom of the screen to the top. Along the way are asteroids, which the players must avoid. Space Race was the first racing arcade video game and the first game with a goal of crossing the screen while avoiding obstacles.
Midway Manufacturing Co. v. Artic International, Inc., 704 F.2d 1009, was a legal case where the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit found that Artic violated Midway's copyright in their arcade games Pac-Man and Galaxian. The lawsuit was part of a trend of "knock-off" video games in the early 1980s, with courts recognizing that a video game can qualify for protection as a copyrighted audiovisual work.
Cosmic Camouflage is a multidirectional shooter for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron. It was released in 1988 as the sequel to Acornsoft's Meteors. Both games are clones of the 1979 Atari, Inc. arcade video game Asteroids.
Substantial similarity, in US copyright law, is the standard used to determine whether a defendant has infringed the reproduction right of a copyright. The standard arises out of the recognition that the exclusive right to make copies of a work would be meaningless if copyright infringement were limited to making only exact and complete reproductions of a work. Many courts also use "substantial similarity" in place of "probative" or "striking similarity" to describe the level of similarity necessary to prove that copying has occurred. A number of tests have been devised by courts to determine substantial similarity. They may rely on expert or lay observation or both and may subjectively judge the feel of a work or critically analyze its elements.
Data East USA, Inc. v. Epyx, Inc. 862 F.2d 204, 9 U.S.P.Q.2d (BNA) 1322 was a court case between two video game manufacturers, where Data East claimed that their copyright in Karate Champ was infringed by World Karate Championship, a game created by Epyx. Data East released Karate Champ in arcades in 1984, and the game became a best-seller and pioneered the fighting game genre. The next year, Epyx published World Karate Championship for home computers, which sold 1.5 million copies. Data East sued Epyx, alleging that the game infringed on their copyright and trademark.
Sid & Marty Krofft Television Productions Inc. v. McDonald's Corp. (1977) was a case in which puppeteers and television producers Sid and Marty Krofft alleged that the copyright in their H.R. Pufnstuf children's television program had been infringed by a series of McDonald's "McDonaldland" advertisements. The finding introduced the concepts of extrinsic and intrinsic tests to determine substantial similarity.
Delrina Corporation v. Triolet Systems Inc, 2002 CanLII 11389, 58 OR (3d) 339, also known as Delrina II, is a 2002 Ontario Court of Appeal case which established the existence of the merger doctrine in Canadian copyright law. The plaintiff, Delrina Corp., sued Triolet Systems Inc. and Brian Duncombe for infringing its copyright of the computer program Sysview by designing similar software, called Assess. The plaintiffs were awarded an interlocutory injunction but ultimately lost at trial. Delrina Corp.’s appeal to the Ontario Court of Appeal was dismissed.
Atari Games Corp. v. Oman was a series of court cases where Atari, a video game developer, challenged the United States Copyright Office for refusing copyright registration for their arcade game Breakout. The Register of Copyrights first rejected Atari's registration in 1987, determining that Breakout lacked sufficient creativity to qualify as an audiovisual work. Atari twice appealed the register's decision before their copyright was granted. Decided in 1992, the case affirmed that video games are protected from clone developers who mimic a game's audiovisual aspects.
The protection of intellectual property (IP) of video games through copyright, patents, and trademarks, shares similar issues with the copyrightability of software as a relatively new area of IP law. The video game industry itself is built on the nature of reusing game concepts from prior games to create new gameplay styles but bounded by illegally direct cloning of existing games, and has made defining intellectual property protections difficult since it is not a fixed medium.
Tetris Holding, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc., 863 F.Supp.2d 394, was a 2012 American legal case related to copyright of video games, confirming that a game's look and feel can be protected under copyright law. Tetris Holding is a company that holds the copyright to the original Tetris game from 1985 and licenses those rights to game developers. Xio Interactive is a game developer that released Mino in 2009, a mobile game based on the gameplay of Tetris. Mino was downloaded millions of times, and Tetris Holding filed a DMCA notice and eventually a lawsuit against Xio for copyright infringement.
Capcom U.S.A. Inc. v. Data East Corp., 1994 WL 1751482 was a 1994 legal case related to the copyright of video games, where Capcom alleged that Data East's game Fighter's History infringed the copyright of Capcom's game Street Fighter II. It was revealed that the design documents for Fighter's History contained several references to Street Fighter II, leading Capcom to sue Data East for damages, as well as a preliminary injunction to stop the distribution of the infringing game. In spite of the intentional similarities between the two games, the court concluded that Data East did not infringe upon Capcom's copyright, as most of these similarities were not protected under copyright. Judge William H. Orrick Jr. applied a legal principle known as the merger doctrine, where courts will not grant copyright protection where it would effectively give someone a monopoly over an idea.
Spry Fox, LLC v. Lolapps, Inc., No. 2:12-cv-00147, was a court case between two video game developers, where Spry Fox alleged that the game Yeti Town, developed by 6waves Lolapps, infringed on their copyrighted game Triple Town. While the case was settled out of court, preliminary opinions by Judge Richard A. Jones affirmed that a video game's "look and feel" may be protected by copyright, affirming the federal district court decision in Tetris Holding, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc. from earlier the same year.
Atari, Inc. v. North American Philips Consumer Electronics Corp., 672 F.2d 607, is one of the first legal cases applying copyright law to video games, barring sales of the game K.C. Munchkin! for its similarities to Pac-Man. Atari had licensed the commercially successful arcade game Pac-Man from Namco and Midway, to produce a version for their Atari 2600 console. Around the same time, Philips created Munchkin as a similar maze-chase game, leading Atari to sue them for copyright infringement.
