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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."
Sony still sells Lemmings across various platforms. He had to see this coming.
Besides directly calling it Lemmings was even more stupid move. Sony has to defend the Lemmings name too, and if the port is low quality it hurts the whole Lemmings brand.
What's the difference between a lemming and lawyer?
A lemming is less short-sighted: he must at least be able to follow another lemming.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Probably not, I think a lot of people have said that before.
allowing 36 hours to remove it instead of 48 hours would have shown at least a little bit of humor...
Hands up if you saw this as happening the minute you read the original story a few days ago.
No, their claim rests on the fact that they published the Lemmings games, or licenced out the ability to publish them, and this is a port of one such licenced product. The trademark is within that context of video games. Even if they couldn't trademark it within that narrow context, that still leaves the first part of "he's created a port of a licenced product." The trademark infringement is a separate part of it.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
Yeah fuck you Sony for protecting your intellectual property!
They forgot to rootkit the original release.
.sig: No such file or directory
Did you even read the mail they sent him? Sony were being extremely nice about the whole thing.
Yup. Hey, it could be worse, they could have advertised the game as a platform feature and then forcibly disabled it after it was paid for.
"This algorithm runs in constant time. Come on, 2,147,483,648 is a constant..."
Much as I welcome any opportunity to highlight what a generally crappy corporation Sony is, and how little regard it has for its customers, I have to say there can't be anyone who didn't see this coming. But then if the point of the process was to get a little self promotion going then he's achieved that, he can comply with the cease and desist and for the sake of 36 hours of his time he's got the kind of publicity big companies pay big agencies big monies to attract, so depending on his motivation, maybe he fully expected this outcome but for him it's still a win.
And of course, once the code is in the wild it pretty much doesn't matter that it's removed from the original source, Sony's lawyers might be busy playing Whac-a-mole for years to come.
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).
Not if you then try and sell it to a shit load of people in a shop, no.
And even if you strike down trademark on the common word "Lemmings" (very doable if expensive), there's still the matter of all the artwork he ripped straight from the original. It's definitely non-trivial, and the answer how he managed to port it all in such a short time is that he copied the artwork and levels verbatim, porting only game engine but retaining (pirating) original game data.
One could say he could continue by releasing his ports stripped of all said data, but with some extraction tool, and allow people with legal PC copies of Lemmings to extract the game assets and use them with the engine. Like Doom for Amiga - you still had to purchase the PC original for the .WAD file - actual content of the game, while the (platform-specific) game engine was purely 3rd party without ID Software involvement or license.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
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.
Psygnosis is now Sony Studio Liverpool.
Perhaps for your own use and enjoyment, but making a port (copy of original gameplay) and then putting it in apps-stores? how is that not a trademark/copyright violation? If sony owns the rights to lemmings, they alone should be allowed to port it to the iphone for common distribution.
Now i realize in this case it kind of sucks since the intrepid geeky developer acting alone and (at least partially) out of passion and fanaticism for games/programming gets beaten back by the big soul-sucking mega-corp, but this works both ways, these laws also prevent sony from taken this guys' original games and shamelessly putting them on the PSP without paying him.
From a geek/nerd point of view, the whole '36 hours to port to several platforms' action was cool and all, but in all other aspects, pretty stupid, especially if the guy knew he was gonna violate sony's rights
People, what a bunch of bastards
Yeah, exactly. We issue them with monopoly powers, so they can continue to enrich our culture. What do they do? They sit on them, let them stagnate, and when somebody actually does act in the interest of the public, and makes them available on platforms the original provider has never supported nor, it seems, ever intends to, they shut him down.
So yes, screw Sony. They obtained their "intellectual property" under false pretences, and are now using it for the exact opposite of what it was intended for.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
They said they'd give him 48 hours or they'd sue. How is that nice? They didn't mention that they understood he was not benefitting commercially, they didn't offer to negotiate in order to allow distribution under their auspirces, it was a completely stock-standard C&D. The only way it could have been less "nice" was if they announced they were starting legal action against him immediately.
Do what we say, or we sue. You have 48 hours.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
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.
And this is why modern copyright is a complete failure. It is used today not as a tool to enrich both the copyright holder and the public through dissemination of ideas, but as a lock and key to prevent anyone else from using it by very intentionally not disseminating said idea..
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!
The port also seemed to include a lot of the original artwork, which they definitely do have copyright on. This is much nicer than Sony needed to be - in the US they could claim massive statutory penalties for distributing the game knowing that it contained copyrighted materials that he did not have a license for.
Of course, now that he has complied, the best thing for Sony to do is offer to buy the code from him. He's demonstrated that there's a market for Lemmings on various mobile platforms and already done the hard work of making the code work on them. It would also give Sony some great PR, and they could treat the existing downloads as a promotional offer.
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Yup, you could argue that. And if you distributed the port code and required people to extract the artwork from their own copy of Lemmings, you could probably get away with it. If, on the other hand, you distribute all of the original levels and sprites, then you shouldn't be surprised when the owner of the copyright on all of these things complains. Compare this game, for example, with Pingus. In Pingus, the gameplay is similar, but the levels and other artwork are all original.
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Also...seriously...how often do you use "lemmings" in everyday conversation? I honestly can't remember the last time I used it in the context of referring to the animal, or in the context of describing herd mentality. (Sheep fit much better once you know the truth about lemmings). In fact the last time I even heard the word "lemming" (outside of the context of the video-game) was on the show QI.
What I find most amusing is that he states:
DISCLAIMER: "iPhone" and "iPod Touch" are registered trademarks of Apple, Inc.
as if Apple are going to try and sue him for mentioning their products, yet all the while he flagrantly copies/reproduces SCEE's IP.
Basically this, if I'm not mistaken. Pretty sure Pingus is legal.
If you saw the video, this guys used all the original graphics, and the trademarked name.
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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?
Doom is a common word. So is quake, and civilisation. Half life is a common scientific phrase.
But when they are used as the name of a computer game, they become distinctive in the context of computer games.
Do you really think you could release computer games called Doom, Quake, Civilisation, and Half Life, without being accused (correctly) of trying to "pass off" your work as being related to the original, simply because the words are common? Really? Trademarks Do Not Work That Way.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The value of their trademark is being diluted. If these ports crash, or contain rootkits, or brick your handset, that harms Sony. They enjoy the right to be protected from that possibility.
They also enjoy the right to bring their own ports to those platforms at a time of their choosing. What makes you think they're not "planning" to do so?
The punitive damages in this case don't have to be huge, they just need to be large enough to punish the wilful infringement that's occurred here.
For once, I'm entirely with Sony. They've been quite restrained in their actions, but if they choose to bitch slap the developer into the poor house, I'll cheer them on, and anyone who produces (or "plans" to produce) anything themselves should too.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Did they actually copy sourcecode? If not then they didn't do anything wrong - gameplay is not protected under copyright law. IANAL.
Get a web developer
For give me, I are Chiner.
numerous ports to other systems, including most recently ports to the PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation 3
Wow! And Microsoft is truly a master of portable software - after all, once you write the software, it runs on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7! Maybe even on the server editions! No complaints there whatsoever!
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.
No, but it's a crappy business move: On short term, it displeases the potential customers who'd like to buy the game on platforms they own, and on longer term, it annoys retrogamers and game culture researchers who not only have to find the game, but also get the platform to run it on. If the game would have a market, no matter how small, decades after the release, and you fail to provide it to the market, you're basically wasting the opportunity: from business standpoint, you're not making any money, and from altruistic standpoint, no one's having any fun.
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.
Then why the hell the researchers wet their pants when they find out that someone has discovered some ancient philosopher's or author's lost works? As in actual text of the writings, not just second-hand facts that the writings may or may not have existed at some point of time? By your logic, surely it would have been enough that we would have, at one point, known that the works did in fact exist for certain?
My point is that if any product of the culture is just pushed out of the door and forgotten - "job done" - it's failing to work as part of our cultural output. One of the reasons copyrights expire is that it allows people to preserve the works and keep them alive. The only reason copyrights exist is that it encourages people to create the works and profit from them before everyone's entitled to make derivatives and preserve the work for posterity. The "preservation" is a natural state of people who don't create works themselves: Hoard copies of artwork, and enjoy them at their leisure.
The fact that the current producers of the culture are actively campaigning for throw-away culture and works that can't be preserved is very harmful. People who keep the works available for future generations to enjoy are doing a service to everyone, whether the media producers approve of it or not.
[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.
May I suggest some form of "Use it or Lose it" clause. I know this is probably wishful thinking, but it seems if you're not using your copyright to protect your financial interests, you should not be permitted to use it as a lock-down control like this.
Would Sony be losing money by allowing this to continue? No, not at all.
They don't use their copyright on the product on a regular basis to protect a version they have out there, and so they should no longer be allowed said copyright. Now if they had a version actively for sale or under development for sale soon, I could see how this would be in the interest of protecting their revenue.
This can be said about a lot of old-school media franchises. We could put an arbitrary limit of - say - 2 years on it. If you haven't had a product for sale covered under the copyright in two years, then you should lose it.
This should be sufficient for allowing any copyright holders time for profit recap from their material, while at the same time allowing the general public to continue their interest beyond what is provided by a single content creator.
If you're not selling anything, what are you protecting with it, precisely?
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
They didn't mention that they understood he was not benefitting commercially.
Completely irrelevant in the face of blatant rip-off of copyrighted works. I hate copyright law as much as the next slashdot reader, but this again is a good example of where copyright law is actually doing exactly what it was intended to do, protect the rights of the copyright owners. Lemmings is not a abandonware, lemmings is being currently sold on several platforms, no permission was sought to make a clone of the game, and all the original copyrighted artwork was copied.
This is extremely nice of Sony. Remember this is Sony we are talking about. I'm frankly surprised they didn't just sue him straight up and then send one of their customer service representatives over to punch him in the face and kick his dog.
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.
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They're still using the property. There have been recent releases of Lemmings for both the PSP and the PS3 in the past year or two.
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
I'd guess though that the trademark, art, and sound assets were certainly in violation.
The fact of the matter is that none of that stuff matters. Maybe they're restricting the platforms that they release it on because they think it will drive sales of the particular platforms where the game is available? That's their right.
It's interesting how Nintendo hasn't released any Mario games on the Xbox360. They most certainly could do it, they've easily got the resources to hire people to do the port, and they've had years and years of time in which they could have done it. And heck, they probably would've sold millions of copies that way. And yet they've chosen not to, because they'd rather use the games to drive sales of their hardware.
While you can certainly argue whether or not Sony restricting lemmings to their hardware is a good business move, it doesn't give you the authority to decide that their IP rights are suddenly irrelevant.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
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.
As a stockholder, you would have legal channels with which to pursue your complaints within Sony. But a company making business decisions that you disagree with does not give you permission to ignore their IP rights.
It's already legal to create clones of games, irregardless of when it was released. There are lemmings clones available already for many platforms. You just can't use the title and artwork straight from the game that you're copying.
In this particular case, you might say that it's obvious that Sony isn't interested in releasing lemmings for these other platforms, but that's a fairly subjective claim. Maybe they've had a couple of teams working on and off on an awesome new lemmings game for years, a la Duke Nukem Forever, yet mismanagement has caused it to continually fall through. I'll admit that that is a rather unlikely scenario for the Lemmings franchise, but it illustrates some of the problems with making assumptions about their intentions and then using those assumptions to justify overturning their IP rights.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Gamedata consists of more than just the executable and he just copied the rest of the gamedata. Gameplay is an abstract concept and thus not eligible for a patent or copyright but the data is a concrete implementation.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Wrong. The public is enriched by having seen the work. It is enriched further when it falls into the public domain, after the creator has had a chance to profit from his labors.