The History of Videogame Lawsuits

AsiNisiMasa writes "1UP is running an interesting piece detailing the history of lawsuits in the gaming industry. It reveals a bit about Nintendo's old strong-arm tactics, the origin of the third party developer, Electronic Art's employee abuse, and of course plenty of violent games being 'linked' to violent behavior. Jack Thompson gets an entire page to himself." From the article: "To show their appreciation, Atari took Activision to court, claiming that the company didn't have the right to develop Atari games. Atari lost, and more companies decided to follow in Activision's footsteps, creating the concept of third-party developers. It was a defining moment for video games."

Comments

Re:Isn't that what he wants?

[Guey_X]

Well, all he gets is lots and lots of bad press. Might make a few people reconsider if he's really a liberty crusader rather than a egomaniac lawyer trying to get rich.

IP Lawsuits Suck...

[cypher35]

As someone who has personally been sued by a gaming company over intelectual property, i would say that gameing companies tend to be WAY overprotective of their intelectual property... http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/10/ 0347222&tid=211&tid=123 I owned and operated a website devoted to hacking and modding console games such as Soul Calibur 2 and Dead or Alive. These mods did nothing but add to the longevity of their games. It doesn't take much to muscle someone around with our court system and ridiculous digital copyright laws... Chances are if you don't have enough money to fight back (like myself, being a college student) they will get their way regardless of weather or not they have a legitimate case against you. -cypher35 [ninjazombie.net]

Re:IP Lawsuits Suck...

[Scarletdown]

These mods did nothing but add to the longevity of their games

Isn't longevity something the game publishers, for the most part, do not want? After all, how can they expect to sell you the same thing over again, repackaged with the eye candy changed around a bit, if you are still happily plugging away with the game's previous incarnation a half a year or more later?

IF only...

[Travelsonic]

Atari took Activision to court, claiming that the company didn't have the right to develop Atari games. Atari lost, and more companies decided to follow in Activision's footsteps, creating the concept of third-party developers. It was a defining moment for video games."

If only something like this would happen to Konami, instead making their overly borad patent on the DDR game pad design less valid so that there can be some real competition in the dance simulation game genre instead of it being an unsteady (legal-wise) battle bwteeen In the Groove, Dance DanceRevolution, and Pump it Up.

Re:Atari also won against Sega

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a very interesting lawsuit in the article:

Not long after Donkey Kong became a huge success in American arcades, MCA Universal sued Nintendo on the grounds that the barrel-chucking gorilla was a ripoff of their own hairy movie star, King Kong. [...] The game manufacturer's lawyer, Howard Lincoln [...] discovered that not only did Universal not own the rights to King Kong, they'd won a lawsuit years prior declaring that King Kong was actually public domain.

I wonder how many toy manufacturers, burger chains, etc. have paid big marketing bucks to tie-in with the current Kong release, not realising that it's public domain? I wonder if any are cashing-in for free?

Re:kind of interesting

[Fulcrum of Evil]

The 1984 computer games crash was, in part, due to the massive flow of low-quality software being pumped out primarily for the Atari 2600

According to this comment, it was Atari's litigation that was responsible. Once they won, a bunch of games that were in the pipeline were suddenly under the same cloud. Ironic, yes?

Re:Isn't that what he wants?

[ApuD2]

Given Jack's track record, that's still half a page more than he deserves.

Rental lawsuits...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nintendo lost the lawsuit, however; the only thing Blockbuster could be nailed for was including original, copyrighted instruction booklets with their rented games. Blockbuster simply switched over to photocopied booklets, or handed out a card that explained the game's basic premise and controls to the player. Despite threats to rental kiosks and retailers who sold multiple copies of certain games, video game rentals were free to prosper, and still do.

I'd like an explanation of this. How is the inclusion of the booklet a no-no while the game isn't? The booklet is just as copyrighted as the game.

Re:Atari also won against Sega

[The Lynxpro]

"Atari won a lawsuit against Sega in the mid-90s. I think it had to do with the fact that Atari had a copyright on certain types of scrolling backgrounds in games. Sega used a lot of scrolling backgrounds in their late 80s / early 90s games."

Patents. Atari settled with Sega. Atari had done the same thing to Nintendo, for close to $200 million as well.

Whether that kept Atari Corp. afloat or not, that's a point of debate amongst us Atarians. For most, the Company was ran into the ground. The Tramiels should have sold Atari Corp. back to TimeWarner back in 1991/92 when TimeWarner wanted them in order to combine Atari Corp.'s tech for the Lynx and the upcoming Jaguar with TimeWarner's recently re-acquried Atari Games Corp. (Atari Games arcade and Tengen in the homes) to re-create a unified Atari which would have been powerful enough to retake the industry. Alas, they did not sell out and the rest is a dismal history of incompetence.