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Rockstar/EA Tit for Tat in GTA/Simpsons Feud
Last week we discussed how GTA parody elements were pulled from The Simpsons Game after some of Rockstar's lawyers got into the act. Apparently, the folks at EA who made the game are a bit peeved about the aggressive lawyering on Rockstar's part and the wussy lawyering on EA's: "The game begins with Bart wanting to play a game called Grand Theft Scratchy. Of course this is a parody of Grand Theft Auto. And Marge immediately takes it away from him. She tries to clean up the town and stop the game from being distributed in Springfield because Marge is against video game violence. She uses horrific violence to stop video game violence... in a video game... That's called irony. The people who make Grand Theft Auto - they spazzed out like little babies."
You don't have to protect yourself from fair use. Allowing anything covered under fair use is required by the law. They would have been all set, with no risk to their trademark. This was clearly parody/satire, which falls comfortably within Fair Use.
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How do you protect a trademark from a parody? Makes me glad I haven't bought a GTA game in forever... fuck them.
Well, we're not talking about copied gameplay, we're talking about parody. From the article, it seems the only real complaint was the use of the name "Grand Theft Scratchy" which was an obvious parody of the grand theft auto games. So its parody, not gameplay, that is the issue. And if you want to know what grand theft auto paradies, here's a quick list. Miami Vice. Scarface. The Godfather. Menace 2 Society. Goodfellas. Boys in the hood. The list goes on and on. Rockstar is blatently guilty of using parody in it's games, so I see no reason why they should be so uptight about others doing the same with their material.