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36-Hour Lemmings Port Gets Sony Cease and Desist
Zerocool3001 writes "The recently featured 36-hour port of the original Palm version of Lemmings to the iPhone and Palm Pre has received a cease and desist letter from Sony. Only one day after submitting the app for approval on the two app stores, the developer has put up a post stating that he 'did this as a tribute to the game — we can only hope that Sony actually does a conversion for platforms like iPhone and Palm Pre in the near future.' The text of the cease and desist letter is available from the developer's website."
Fuck you Sony!
'When the Going gets Weird, the Weird turn Pro.' - Hunter S. Thompson
Hands up if you saw this as happening the minute you read the original story a few days ago.
Yeah...he kind of copied the trademark, and all the art wholesale. He walked right into this one, and the law is pretty squarely not on his side (which is exactly the way I feel it should be).
Look at what he produced, it is a straight port of the game. Everything is the same.
There is no WAY this would fly especially as the Lemmings games are still sold for various platforms commercially. SOME companies TOLERATE old material being used freely but that is only if they don't see any future potential in it.
Lemmings still has potential.
Now you could start a discussion about copyright reform and such, but for now, making a blatant PORT (this is far further then a copy of the idea, it is the same idea) is illegal.
And Sony was nice enough about it, they have given him 48 hours to clean the stuff up and are not even pressuring him to destroy all the distrubuted copies. Basically they are saying, "Well we don't like it but if you don't do it anymore we won't hold you responsible for the damages caused so far".
Frankly, if I were him I would thank Sony on his bare knees. For a stunt he should NEVER have distributed the ports and for a "software should be free" he should never have signed his name.
You CAN make a Ufo: Enemy unknown game is you wished, you could even use enemies with the same capabilties (I doubt the makers would want a lawsuit over the *cough* Alien *cough* that impregnates your soldiers only for another *cough* Alien *cough* to burst out from them to go to court.) but a direct port? Nope.
Nice project kid, great way to get your name out there. Now take the extremely nice offer of Sony to clean it all up.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Microsoft use the "Windows" trademark for their operating system, and they claimed "Lindows" was similar enough to cause confusion in the market. I believe Microsoft were correct in this belief.
Lindows, however, counter-claimed that; within the IT industry the term "window(s)" was a generic term, used well before and apart from Microsoft's usage of it as a product name. I believe also that Lindows were correct in this belief.
The two sides were then looking at the trademark dispute being decided in court, where there was the very real possibility that Microsoft's "Windows" trademark would be found invalid. So Microsoft offered Lindows a big chunk of change if they changed their name and dropped the case.
As much as I want to call Sony the villain here, they really aren't.
The person who ported it took everything from the original game and released it on a newer platform. That is like someone taking Sonic the Hedgehog or Mario bros and porting it over with all the same graphics, sounds, and design.
They're protecting their property from theft, here. Had he used his own art, sounds, etc, with the same gameplay then Sony wouldn't really have a leg to stand on, but he basically stole everything from the original and ported it over. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. He shouldn't have assumed that he could take the assets without asking.
nice to get slashdotted twice in a week - the website still seems to be up this time around.
since i am on vacation (in egypt) for two weeks - i had to simply withdraw the submission and downloads from the application catalogs and own website, since sony gave a 48 hour window, i can deal with it in more detail when i am back from vacation. as for the intellectual property, no original code was uses (in fact, the palm os version was my own implementation) the only thing that is definitely "used" is the name (Lemmings) and the original EGA graphics from the game. even the levels are redesigned in the event that they are not workable with one player mode and the limitations of the palm os platform
IANAL - but since no original files are used, in fact everything is re-created without reference to the original source code, the only infringing rights here are the use of the name "Lemmings". there have been a number of copyright cases dealing with the look and feel - so it can go either way, intellectual property rights come down to if a jury believes there is confusion between the original and the remake.
i will try to open discussions with SCEE (Sony Entertainment) about getting an official license for the game, in fact, we were looking for the original license holders back in 2001 when we did the palm os versions - but it was in flux between Take Two Interactive, Sony and no-one knew their ass from a hole in the ground. the good news is now SCEE are claiming ownership, so we can now talk to them - and we have proof of concepts made, so if they play nice, this title will officially come to these platforms, if not - then you can start saying how evil they are.
lets see how the discussions go!
[Before Portal officially came to Mac OS X,] could people have legally cloned it, ripped off all the assets, and distributed it for free? I don't even think this is a slippery slope.
The drop-off point is when someone copied the . Under U.S. law, a Portal clone using original assets would fall under the exclusion of game operation methods in 17 USC 102(b), as would Pingus, a Lemmings clone using original assets. The Tetris Company appears not to understand this.
There's are versions of Lemmings for the PSP and PS3 on the PSN app store right now.
In other words, they do publish it, but only for their own consoles.
New versions of Lemmings became a system exclusive title as soon as Sony bought Psygnosis.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
If he created a port, from scratch (including graphics) he would be able to distribute it - except for the name.
All they control here is the name and the graphics he copied. And maps if those are included.