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."

Comments

Re:May I be the first to say:

[adamofgreyskull]

Wow. You are so insightful! Of course you can say whatever the hell you want to if you don't care whether or not it's the truth. It's incredibly disingenuous to say that they've been "sitting on" or letting Lemmings "stagnate":

The popularity of the game led to development of numerous ports to other systems, including most recently ports to the PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation 3 in 2006 and 2007, and the creation of several sequels.

Source: Wikipedia

How do you or Mobile1UP know that Sony wasn't planning on porting Lemmings to iPhone/iPad/Android? Firstly, you don't. Secondly, it's irrelevant! It's not a condition of copyright, patent or trademark law that you have to make your work available on all platforms past, present and future. The intended purpose of patent and copyright systems is indeed to provide incentive to produce, and therefore advance the state of the art, or enrich culture. However, Lemmings on the Amiga did that. Job done. They (now Sony) have copyright in the original game. That's what they get for developing the game (or rather..buying the developer of the game).

Besides which...you can buy a Lemmings game on a current generation console! How is that letting the property stagnate? And how in the name of Zeus' butthole did you get modded insightful? To have the bare-faced cheek to rip off a game, which, with the exception of a single-screen disclaimer that it's not authorised by SCEE, is indistinguishable from the original Lemmings, and then to try and distribute it through the Apple App-Store is possibly the most retarded thing I've ever seen since Sony tried to install rootkits on their customer's machines. We all love to support "the little guy" against "evil corporations" but this was the single most obvious outcome since that guy tried to play Russian Roulette with a semi-automatic pistol.

Nothing is stopping Mobile1UP from making their own version of a "Lemmings" game, with their own graphics resources/levels and their own music etc. Do you think they'd be happy if someone came along and made such an exact copy of one of their original games and started distributing it through the App-Store?

Re:May I be the first to say:

[TheRaven64]

Yes there is. Copyright is not intended as an incentive to create, it is intended as an incentive to publish. Society does not gain anything if you create the best ever novel but never let anyone read it. Society benefits greatly if you create this novel and then circulate it widely. Copyright is a bargain struck between creators and consumers - the consumers agree to grant a time-limited (in theory) monopoly to the creator, in exchange for the creator, in turn, publishing the work.