Posts Tagged "game"

On May 30, 2012, a Federal District Court in New Jersey granted summary judgment to Tetris in an infringement case against Xio Interactive, Inc. for their iPhone game “Mino.” In Tetris Holding, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc., the judge ruled that Xio infringed upon Tetris’ copyright and trade dress. The decision is an important gain for game developers, who are often offered little protection against infringement by game studios who produce clones of popular games for profit. Many game developers have trouble protecting their intellectual property rights against companies who create clone games to cash in on successful designs. Clones copy the look, feel, and mechanics of a popular game for a profit, but, until recently, the original developers had trouble proving these clones crossed the line into copyright infringement. Often, developers like Xio successfully argued that they copied only functional elements of the game, such as the underlying rules or theme, and not that game’s particular expression of them. The New Jersey court ruled for Tetris, however, holding that Xio’s clone copied various parts of “Tetris” that may have been acceptable individually, but, taken together, constituted infringement. While the holding is well argued, the court may also have ruled for Tetris after Xio openly admitted to downloading Tetris’...