http://gotgame.com/2012/01/03/atari-claiming-copyright-infringement-on-vector-tanks/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/05/exclusive-app-store-game-copycat-battle-zone-heats-up/
Very bad indeed, what happen to hundreds of Pong, Asteroids type game on app store?
Saw this a while back. Normally, I’d say the guys should fight it and would win. However, they messed up. The original developers literally contacted Atari for permission when they started their series of Vector Tank games, never got an answer and went ahead with it.
In court, that’s like a signed confession of willing copyright infringement.
I have to admit, Atari are acting like they have a bunch of IPs to protect. I haven’t seen them release a game in years.
The art assets are far too similar on those 2 games. I was original riled up, too, but when I saw the art assets… Cripes.
If they’d just designed their own things instead (other than just the tank) they could easily have fought this off.
They released a “new” asteroids game for iOS recently.
The article seems to mention that the new games were developed by Indie studios utilizing the Atari licensing. I know some guy had released a game made in Unity called Asteroids 2012, it was a pretty poor clone and he had to remove his “classic asteroids” mode from the game because of Atari -__-
Personally, I just wouldn’t use the name Asteroids, they don’t have a monopoly on games made in space that involve asteroids/meteors/spaceships… I’m planning on releasing a polished version of this on iOS/Android soon:
http://www.burrowgames.com/games
Avoiding using the word Asteroids on purpose though…
Hmm, can you protect a name like Asteroids? I mean asteroids are asteroids, not comets, not shooting stars, not meteroids, …
Imagine if everyone had copyrighted everything at the beginning there would be no more games. FPS would end after DOOM (okay doom wasnt the first).
Not to mention that Pong clones are all over the place, perhaps more of those than Atari can sue in their whole lifetimes combined. Heck, I believe there were Pong clones even made in Unity as a test project, wouldn’t surprise me.
Really Atari has existed as a proper company for decades, its been bought and sold and is no more than a facade , a name to sell products of the back of and of course its back catalogue IP. Though I do remember they have been quite forceful for protecting their IP, Plasma Pong was taken down, several years ago, so this action comes as no surprise.
Given that DOOM was/is under copyright [unless there were some major changes in the law I’m not aware of] your argument simply doesn’t stack up.
That wasn’t his point.
I was also under the impression you can’t copyright a game ‘concept’. And their pong was only primitives. So what do they want to own the rights to the primitive rectangle and sphere meshes now?
Then he needs to learn the correct terms… even this post is copyrighted!
We’re all allowed to develop games based on similar mechanics, but what they seem to falling foul of here is their manner of expressing the game, which is copyrightable.
Relevant bit here: http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html
Contrast with Zynga, which is currently ripping off Nimblebit’s Tiny Towers:
Even then I would note that there’s nothing saying that they actually breached copyright.
Atari have a complaint - that’s cool.
The developers disagree - that’s cool.
Apple have used their platform to simply remove the game - not so cool, but somewhat understandable.
The devs haven’t been sued, they haven’t been found of infringement etc.
Yes, there’s no ruling on it, that’s up to the courts to decide if a suit does push through; I just happened to be reading the Zynga link over on Reddit and was just amused that there was an actual section in copyright law referring to games, and thought it was relevant here.
Well, i guess i won’t get an answer if you can protect a common term like asteroids, which areas/purposes are covered, in which countries this is possible, in which they don’t care about and so on, here. This is not a lawyers forum. To me personally it just doesn’t make sense. I’m fine with if people come up with madeup titles on their own but common terms don’t make sense.
This almost makes me wanna write an Asteroids. Btw. the best version was on the VCS 2600, perfect in terms of variation and gameplay.
It’s can only really be the style of the visuals that they could have raised a complaint over, or perhaps the use of models that look a lot like the originals. Either way, I’m sure Black Powder’s defence will go down the "can’t copyright a primitive/wire frame model’ route and hope they have a judge who understands the concepts well enough to make a fair ruling (which is always a nightmare in technology related cases).
Personally, I don’t think Atari have a case unless it related to the use of a model, but even the models are so low detail that it could easily be argued they are common primitive representations of real world items. Atari could also be banking on Black Powder potentially not having the funds to fight the claim and just using the exercise to create a gap in the market for a new release of their own product.
From what I remember, I think you can, but it would have to be a trademark not a copyright, and it would have to have a context applied to it (so in this case any game called ‘Asteroids’ could be found in breach, but a chocolate bar wouldn’t). Although with how these sorts of laws change country to country I would be surprised if I was completely wrong 
I still find it odd that every time we get into copyright and IP law topics a lot of people show they are not very informed about them. I know I dived into copyright back when I wanted to make comic books (perhaps because it was a hot topic how many stolen character concepts had become popular, plus the Babylon 5/Deep Space Nine controversy.)
Anyways, no, you can’t “copyright a concept”, however, you can copyright a work. So no, you can’t copyright a first person game about tanks. You can’t copyright a game made with vector graphics. But you may copyright this one game that is about tanks that has these green vector graphics and is named Battlezone.
Now, that’s still a bit loose, and there is an additional thing required for copyright infringement: it must be proved willing. You can’t “accidentally” do copyright infringement. This does not mean you have to think “bu ha ha I’ll get away with it” nor that you can claim “I was ignorant of the law so I’m innocent”, what this means is you had to be aware of the original work you copied.
Usually, this may have to go to a lengthy court process where they victim will have to be proven to have had knowledge of the original work, plus the work must be similar enough.
I would say, without a doubt, these two works are similar enough to make the IP owner have grounds to start an investigation. Due to the amount of infringement going on right now, companies like Apple and Youtube have decided to give the IP owner the most favor in these claims (and yes, that IS the fault of all the people that ignore copyright laws, if legitimate claims were the exceptions instead of the rule, things would be different.) At such a point, if the game developer thought the claim was not legitimate, they can go to court, and even attempt to get compensation for lost sales due to the takedown.
Problems:
These things are likely to explode in their face and make them lose the case and open for a counter suit to cover Atari’s legal fees.
