🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Dec20.155958.11026@ee.rochester.edu> seah@ee.rochester.edu (David Seah) writes:
>In article <1992Dec18.143639.3778@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> cwatters@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Coyt D Watters) writes:
>>Parker Brothers had to chase down a lot of people who were translating the 
>>popular Monopoly and Risk games into computer versions without licensing 
>>them.  Too many of these, and the copyright holders can "lose" the copyright
>>to the public domain.
>
>Has this happened with Tetris?  There seem to be ten million clones of it
>out there. 

The interesting thing about Tetris's being copyrighted is that Tetris is not
a game that was "invented" (IMHO).  Rather, it falls into that special
category of simple, elegant mathematical games waiting to be "discovered."
Rubik's Cube is really no different -- it was just a matter of time before
somebody made one.  And when someone did, you thought, "Gee, why didn't I
think of that? -- it's so simple!"

Getting back to the copyright thing, it's really a matter of luck who gets to
own the simple ideas, and it's really sort of sad when someone does.  I mean,
nobody cares if someone owns the copyright to Super Mario World XXVII.  But
we're all a little peeved when a simple game like Tetris is copyrighted.

Sigh.

--
Todd Lehman
toddl@county.lmt.mn.org