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Sega Goes Crazy, Sues Fox, EA Over Taxi

Posted by simoniker on from the crazy-damages dept.

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'."

3 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. Software Patents? by maharito · · Score: 4, Interesting

    IANAL, but last time I checked, games fall under the category of software, which is, under current law, not able to be patented. Perhaps if developers of The Simpsons Road Rage were exposed to source code from Crazy Taxi before they began designing and coding the game, then a case of copyright infringement would be in question here. But "look and feel" and software in general, is not patentable under current law. Furthermore, by some stretch of logic, couldn't the makers of Crazy Taxi also sue Rockstar for including Taxi mini-missions and the insane stunt bonus in their GTA series of games? I think that perhaps game companies should worry more about producing worthwhile games than suing competing game companies for creating games that are in some ways similar, but share no source code. But when it comes to this kind of stuff we should all bow to the almighty dollar rather than customer satisfaction.

  2. I love Sega and all, but seriously.. by Inoshiro · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The time for this lawsuit was over a year ago. You know, before the game went Greatest Hits on PS2 and Platinum Hits on Xbox. Before the sequel came out!

    It reminds me of Sega being sued by a lady who claims that Sega used her likeness (instead of Apollo Smile, who did the voice work on the NA releases) in Space Channel 5. There's no reason for this frivolous lawsuit.

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  3. in a world with butterflies and fairies... by understyled · · Score: 1, Interesting

    ...these people would be counter-sued by the makers of Space Taxi.

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