Kit Kat Accused of Copying Atari Game Breakout (bbc.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Kit Kat's maker Nestle has been accused of copying Breakout, the 1970s computer game, in a marketing campaign. Atari, the company behind some of the most popular early video games, has filed a suit alleging Nestle knowingly exploited the game's look and feel. The advert showed a game similar to Breakout but where the bricks were replaced with single Kit Kat bars. Nestle said it was aware of the lawsuit and would defend itself "strongly" against the allegations. Breakout was created as a successor to "Pong" by Apple founders, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. In the advert, which is titled "Kit Kat: Breakout", a row of people, of varying ages and appearance, share a sofa and play a video game during their work break. In the game depicted, a primitive paddle moves side-to-side to bounce a ball into a collision with the horizontal bars ranged across the top of the screen.

Comments

Re:Shouldn't have used the name 'Breakout'

[Anonymous Coward]

You cannot copyright game mechanics.

Re:Shouldn't have used the name 'Breakout'

[tepples]

For one thing, that depends on the country.

For another, in Slashdot's home country, you can copyright those elements that are just outside the scope of "mechanics". For example, the mechanics of Tetris aren't copyrighted, but the specific use of the seven one-sided tetrominoes with those mechanics is.