[linux-elitists] *tris?

[Don Marti]

One Tetris-like game for a non-free platform got a
C&D from The Tetris Company.

http://simonhaertel.de/
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/07/09/mac_tetris_game_kill.html

Since Tetris-like games seem to be as ubiquitous
in free software distributions as Freecell-like
games...bogus legal threat or not?  It seems like the
copyright stuff in the C&D is bogus and the only way
for The Tetris Company to have an exclusive interest
in the gameplay as such would be patent.  There
doesn't seem to be a Tetris patent.  And I don't think
there's much that a trademark holder could say about
giving credit to Tetris in the game's description on
the web or in a package management tool.

But a lot of the Free Tetris-like games have names
that a court might say are confusingly similar to
Tetris ("${toolkit_name}tris").

-- 
Don Marti                    
http://zgp.org/~dmarti/
dmarti@zgp.org           LinuxWorld: August 14-17, 2006, San Francisco