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Rockbox gets cease-and-desisted
Hi all, I just received the following mail today -- I guess because I recently edited the wiki page (at least it shows me as the last editor of the page up to now) and my mail address can be found on the wiki. I'm somewhat unsure how to react to this -- at least the mail doesn't seem to be forged. Should I direct him to rockbox-dev? Or is there any other "official representative" for stuff like this? I hope we can solve this issue pretty quickly. - Dominik ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Dave Haas <dave@popcap.com> Date: Apr 14, 2006 11:18 PM Subject: Remove PluginJewels from RockBox downloads immediately To: Dominik.Riebeling@gmail.com Cc: Dave Haas <dave@popcap.com> Mr. Riebeling: The game PluginJewels, for use on RockBox and available at http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/PluginJewels, is a blatant copyright violation of Bejeweled, the popular match-three game owned by my company, PopCap Games, Inc., of Seattle, Washington, USA. I am writing to you to demand that you remove PluginJewels from www.rockbox.org and all other sites where users may download this game for the Rockbox, no later than April 30, 2006. PopCap Games takes seriously all copyright and trademark violations of our games and, if necessary, we will enforce our rights to the fullest extent of the law. Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. I await your response. David K. Haas Chief Operating Officer PopCap Games, Inc. (Log in to post comments)
Rockbox gets cease-and-desisted Posted Apr 17, 2006 13:57 UTC (Mon) by moxfyre (subscriber, #13847) [Link] (a) How is it a copyright violation if it doesn't use the code or graphics of the original game?
(b) If it's the "concept" or rules of the game that are copyrighted... don't I remember this game from my TI calculator in around 1995?
Game concepts are not copyrightable Posted Apr 17, 2006 13:59 UTC (Mon) by stevenj (subscriber, #421) [Link] According to the US Copyright Office:The idea for a game is not protected by copyright. The same is true of the name or title given to the game and of the method or methods for playing it.
Rockbox gets cease-and-desisted Posted Apr 17, 2006 15:12 UTC (Mon) by TwoTimeGrime (guest, #11688) [Link] I remember games like this on my Commodore 64 about 20 years ago. This guy needs to hire a lawyer before he emails people about violating copyright.
Rockbox authors' response Posted Apr 17, 2006 13:57 UTC (Mon) by stevenj (subscriber, #421) [Link] According to their mailing list, the Rockbox authors have just sent this response:Hi Dave.
Rockbox gets cease-and-desisted Posted Apr 17, 2006 16:37 UTC (Mon) by Henning (subscriber, #37195) [Link] I wonder if the author of Gweled has heard from them also as it is a clone of the same game.This seems alot like the claims that The Tetris Company are doing and I'm not quite sure how much grounding they have but they have at least scared away Red Hat/Fedora from shipping the tetris-clone in gnome-games in their distributions.
Rockbox gets cease-and-desisted Posted Apr 19, 2006 6:24 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] It's not just *a* clone; it's the clone from which the Rockbox implementation's graphics were taken!
Response from PopCap Posted Apr 17, 2006 17:51 UTC (Mon) by TwoTimeGrime (guest, #11688) [Link] I sent an email to Dave Haas to ask what the issue was. He responded and said that the icons in PluginJewels and the Palm version of Bejeweled appear to be identical. He included these links of screenshots:
PluginJewels:
Bejewled:
I have to say they look almost 100% the same. Zooming in shows some minor differences but they are "too close for comfort."
Response from PopCap Posted Apr 17, 2006 17:58 UTC (Mon) by TwoTimeGrime (guest, #11688) [Link] Oops. The second link is http://www.astraware.com/products/bejeweled/palm/bejewele...
PluginJewels images come from Gweled Posted Apr 17, 2006 18:18 UTC (Mon) by stevenj (subscriber, #421) [Link] Note that the images for PluginJewels come from the game Gweled, a GNOME Bejeweled clone.They clearly aren't pixel-per-pixel copies of the Bejeweled images, although I don't know if they are close enough to constitute infringement. Given that there have been dozens of "Jewel-matching" games, dating back many years now, it would be interesting to try to put together a systematic timeline and see who is copying whom.
PluginJewels images come from Gweled Posted Apr 17, 2006 18:20 UTC (Mon) by stevenj (subscriber, #421) [Link] Note also that version 0.2 of Gweled lists the change:
PluginJewels images come from Gweled Posted Apr 17, 2006 19:19 UTC (Mon) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] Note also that 0.2 was the first public release.
Response from PopCap Posted Apr 17, 2006 18:03 UTC (Mon) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] Interesting. So an icon change would fix the problem? That seems like an easy fix - the game could be played just as well with kittens, national flags, or just about anything except those new OpenOffice icons which all look the same...
Response from PopCap Posted Apr 17, 2006 19:21 UTC (Mon) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] To me, they look nothing alike. The blue and orange gems, in particular, show a huge design difference. On the other hand, PluginJewels looks almost exactly like a scaled-down version of the Geweled gems, which are known to be free.
Response from PopCap Posted Apr 17, 2006 19:53 UTC (Mon) by frazier (subscriber, #3060) [Link] Indeed, here's the Geweled graphics:1) http://sebdelestaing.free.fr/gweled/Images/gweled_screens...
When comparing to these (as mentioned before):
...it is my opinion that 1) and 2) are from the same art base and they are not modified versions of 3), and are cleanroom.
Now, how close can they be to another game and not be in violation of copyright? I don't know. I am reasonably confident after close examination that the art in the 1) and 2) does not contain data from 3), however.
redrawn != "cleanroom" Posted Apr 17, 2006 20:58 UTC (Mon) by stevenj (subscriber, #421) [Link] ...it is my opinion that 1) and 2) are from the same art base and they are not modified versions of 3), and are cleanroom. Indeed, the Rockbox developers themselves state that their graphics are taken from Gweled (see above), and the Gweled author claims to have created "SVG original graphics". However, this doesn't make them "cleanroom"—that term (which is usually applied to reverse engineering efforts) would imply that the Gweled graphics were created by someone who had never seen the Bejeweled graphics. I highly doubt that is the case here. The question is, were the elements of the Bejeweled graphics that were (probably) copied sufficiently original to be copyrightable? (i.e., the shapes of the jewels and their facets, their coloration, and the general shading of the facets.)
Update: Bejeweled replies to Rockbox Posted Apr 18, 2006 10:39 UTC (Tue) by stevenj (subscriber, #421) [Link] The reply from Dave Haas of PopCap was posted on the Rockbox mailing list today. The relevant paragraph seems to be:Regarding your question below, the gem graphics in the color image of PluginJewels as seen at http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/pub/Main/PluginJewels/jewelscolor.png , are identical to the graphics seen in versions of Bejeweled(R) for PalmOS, PocketPC, or Windows Mobile, seen here: http://www.astraware.com/products/bejeweled/palm/bejeweled_screenshot_320x320_02.gif . The screenshots are 100% identical, down to the gem placement on the game grid. The response on the mailing list seems to vary from replacing the images just to save trouble (e.g. using the images from Jools instead), to arguing that "100% identical" is an obvious overstatement and that PopCap has no case. I would be very curious to see how it turned out if it came to a legal challenge, or at least hear an informed opinion by a copyright-law expert. This may be too expensive to be worth the trouble, however, compared to just swapping icons.
Update: Bejeweled replies to Rockbox Posted Apr 18, 2006 13:37 UTC (Tue) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link] Well, copyright covers organization of elements of a work as well as the verbatim content. You can't paraphrase a book directly (that is, at a detail level - say paragraph-by-paragraph) without infringing (modulo fair use exceptions like parody), though you can write a description of the book (stating the ideas in your own words and your own logical organization) without infringing.
The law doesn't go to details; it would be up to a judge or jury to review the evidence and decide if the set of icons and the arrangements of the icons in the user interface of one game infringed the others. If anybody can cite case law on previous cases involving such similarities, that would be interesting. The "Anti-Monopoly" case apparently turned on the history of the game rather than details of what would constitute infringement; that might apply here, too, if some of the reports of earlier versions are close enough to the specifics of the current games.
Anti-Monopoly Posted Apr 18, 2006 14:16 UTC (Tue) by frazier (subscriber, #3060) [Link] This is interesting:http://www.washingtonfreepress.org/36/court.html http://www.antimonopoly.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Monopoly
The only thing I "knew" in regards to a Monopoly Monopoly was this classic from The Onion:
-Brock
Update: Source for case law Posted Apr 19, 2006 14:47 UTC (Wed) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link] If you're interested, <http://www.patentarcade.com/> provides a bunch of summaries of decisions in the specific area of video games.
Update: Bejeweled replies to Rockbox Posted Apr 19, 2006 2:10 UTC (Wed) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link] Even being identical is not necessarily infringement ... independent creation is an absolute defence, and if the code underlying the images is different (bitmap as opposed to vector, or autogenerated by program code, or whatever).
Rockbox should refer Haas to the font vendors and find several examples where IDENTICAL fonts have been declared NOT to be copyright violations. I think there are several points at which Helvetica and Univers are identical, along with several of the Swiss variants. There's probably examples within the Times family. Etc etc.
It might be an idea to ask Groklaw and see if they can come up with stuff! Basically, this Haas is talking out his rear end, and there is legal precedent we can use to stuff this hole, should we wish :-)
Cheers,
Update: Bejeweled replies to Rockbox Posted Apr 19, 2006 6:43 UTC (Wed) by job (guest, #670) [Link] That's true. I believe Microsoft cloned Helvetica and called it Arial, where even all the font metrics are identical to make sure font substitution works automatically. (If I remember correctly.) They did it for many typefaces, and I don't believe they payed any royalities since they had to change the names.
Update: Bejeweled replies to Rockbox Posted Apr 19, 2006 6:57 UTC (Wed) by job (guest, #670) [Link] This turned out to be a bad example after some Googling. Apparently Microsoft hired Monotype for this work, who were too professional to completely clone the typeface and it turned out quite different (not as nice, in my opinion) with only identical metrics. But I'm sure there are other, better, examples.
Rockbox gets cease-and-desisted Posted Apr 19, 2006 14:28 UTC (Wed) by 20khz (guest, #37231) [Link] http://thepiratebay.org/legal.php
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