Sega Goes Crazy, Sues Fox, EA Over Taxi

Thanks to Reuters for the news that Sega has sued Fox, EA, and developers Radical Entertainment over the similarity between EA's The Simpsons Road Rage and Sega's own Crazy Taxi. The story reveals: "Sega holds a U.S. patent, known as the '138 patent, on 'Crazy Taxi,' in which players take the role of a taxi driver who has to accomplish outrageous driving stunts to pick up passengers and quickly deliver them to their destinations." The patent infringement suit, which asks for the recall of the game and damages for lost profits, claims The Simpsons Road Rage was designed to "deliberately copy and imitate", citing a review "...that characterized 'Road Rage' as a 'shameless incident of design burglary'."

Comments

Re:Grand Theft Auto

[Babbster]

Indeed. In fact, if Simpsons Road Rage is a ripoff of anything, its gameplay is a blatant ripoff of GTA3.

Actually, you're thinking of Simpsons Hit&Run which is the GTA3/VC ripoff. Simpsons Road Rage was indeed pure Crazy Taxi action.

Patent 6,200,138

[pkaminsk]

I'm guessing that Sega is referring to patent 6,200,138. From a quick scan, the patent seems to claim 1) an algorithm to get pedestrians to leap out of the way of the player's car and 2) a directional arrow pointing to the player's destination. (There's also some mumbo-jumbo about "easy to understand" displays and "real driving feeling" -- make of it what you will.) I'll leave it to patent agents expert in the field (do such beasts exist?) to determine whether the patent is valid and whether it's been infringed.

Previous Lawsuit

[Sangloth]

Anybody remember Fighter's History?
I've never played either Crazy Taxi or Simpson's Road Rage, but Fighter's History was practically a palette shift of Street Fighter 2. Capcom took DataEast to court, and lost. The judge felt that while there were definitaly similarities, Fighter's History was a different game of the same genre.

Uncanny Simularities"

Quick Summation Half way down

I'm surprised, I remember the entire thing so vividly, but I just can't find more resources about it on the web....

Sangloth
I'd appreciate any comment with a logical basis...it doesn't even have to agree with me.

Precedent

[ronfar]

There already is a legal precedent for this in the video game industry, I refer you to the case of K. C. Munchkin a Pacman type game that came out for the Magnavox Odyssey.

Scroll down this page for details:

Odyssey II page

From this, I'd say that Sega may have a case, provided they really can demonstrate that there is no prior art.

However, I'm hoping they don't get the game removed from shelves. That's what happened with K. C. Munchkin fortunately after I had already purchased it.