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Rockbox mail archiveSubject: Re: What do you think of this?Re: What do you think of this?
From: Joaquim Carvalho <jdc_at_x64.com>
Date: 27 Feb 2003 19:31:37 +0000 On Thu, 2003-02-27 at 18:35, Björn Stenberg wrote: > Joaquim Carvalho wrote: > > A rewritten version won't be legal either because Atari has patented > > the game concept. > > Really? I searched USPTO but found nothing. Do you have any links to more information about this? > I'm not a legal expert, "IP protection" stuff really annoys me, don't know if it's actually a patent but Atari has legal ways to prevent other companies from cloning their games. In this article about the video game history you can read that Mattel Intellivision finished an Asteroids clone and then decided against releasing it because they didn't want a lawsuit. http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Fortress/3798/intellivision.htm The same has happened to a company called Starpath who also wrote an Asteroids lookalike. http://www.atariprotos.com/2600/software/suicidemission/suicidemission.htm Magnavox was sued by Atari because of K.C. Munchkin, a PacMan clone and lost. http://videogames.gamespot.com/features/universal/hov/p5_01.html This one is 100% stupid: Magnavox patented the whole concept of the home video game system and has successfully sued Mattel because of it: http://www.emuunlim.com/doteaters/play3sta3.htm As we're on the subject of patents are you all aware of the threat of software patents starting being accepted in Europe? We're not brain-dead and we must never accept having to pay to use algorithms like run-length-encoding. If this subject is new to you here's a place where you can start reading something about it: http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2741&start=15 If not, have you signed the petition? http://petition.eurolinux.org/ Joaquim Received on 2003-02-27 Page template was last modified "Tue Sep 7 00:00:02 2021" The Rockbox Crew -- Privacy Policy |