🚀 go-pugleaf

From article <1990Aug14.212146.28726@Solbourne.COM>, by kucharsk@number6.Solbourne.COM (William Kucharski):
> In article <3145@awdprime.UUCP> tif@doorstop.austin.ibm.com (Paul Chamberlain) writes:
>  >I just heard of another law suit that sounds like L&F that really bugs me.
>  >We've all heard of Tetris right?  Yesterday I saw a new version of Tetris
>  >for the Nintendo.  The new one, distributed by Tengen, seems far superior
>  >at least from it's description.  It allows two players simultaneously and
>  >(from the pictures) looks like a more appealing image.
> 
> The Tengen one actually came out _before_ the Nintendo version, and the Nintendo suit
> was successful because Nintendo had purchased the home video rights to the game and
> Tengen had not.

	I am surprised to see someone on gnu.misc.discuss swallowing the
Nintendo party line without so much as an "alledgedly". As _I_ understand it,
the scenario was something like:

	A Russian writes the first version.

	An Englishman sees it and buys "all home computer rights, excepting
only hand-held LCD units"

	An American sees the PC version and persuades his company to buy
rights to the Famicon version (NES) from the Englishman and coin-op rights
directly from the Russian

	The American's company does a coin-op version, and a version for the
NES. They also sell the Famicon rights to a Japanese company.

	About this time the game is getting very popular, so the Japanese
heads over to Russia to see if he can cut a better deal with the Russian.
(Excuse me, to clarify the legal nature of his rights to the game)

	The Russian decides maybe his English was not so good and he didn't
_mean_ to include the Famicon in the sale to the Englishman (despite the
fact that Famicon is "short" for "Family computer", and it was sold with
a keyboard and disk drive at one time and why single-out hand-helds if
you had already eliminated anything that wasn't a computer in the PC sense?)
Perhaps his English is now improved by the prospect of new large royalties.

	BTW, "the Russian" who negotiated the original deal is not _allowed_
to testify as to his original intent. His new "representative" testifies.

	Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, or a judge, and I am a bit "closer"
to this case than makes for a dispassionate reading, but all the above
are a matter of public record and appeared in the papers (at least the
San Jose Mercury News) at the time. You can make your own judgement, but
I hope you can see that it is not all _that_ clear cut.

					Mike

| Mike Albaugh (albaugh@dms.UUCP || {...decwrl!pyramid!}weitek!dms!albaugh)
| Atari Games Corp (Arcade Games, no relation to the makers of the ST)
| 675 Sycamore Dr. Milpitas, CA 95035		voice: (408)434-1709
| The opinions expressed are my own (Boy, are they ever)