Copy games renamed

[vexorg]

I've always wondered about the need to rename the games that were clearly copies of well known games.
Was there a risk of suing them writers?

It seemed odd as game was the same regardless of the name. It's the content that would be more valuable than the name.

[tnash]

Iirc the argument was that names were trademarked, but only the code was copyrightable even if the game was very similar. So copying the full code would be breach of copyright, reimplemnting it might not despite identical results!

Also worth bearing in mind that changing the name keeps you off the radar of the rights-holder...

[bob147]

I don't think you can copyright protect a concept, although I'm no expert. You can protect pacman but you can't protect 'game where you go around a maze collecting dots and running away from ghosts'.

Its a grey area though because I'm imagining someone today copying the exact level layouts and physics from the latest mario game just with a different name, graphics and sound, surely nintendo would go after it anyway.

[vexorg]

Its a grey area though because I'm imagining someone today copying the exact level layouts and physics from the latest mario game just with a different name, graphics and sound, surely nintendo would go after it anyway.

That's it exactly, it just seemed a bizarre loophole if it was the case that you can rename and avoid any court case.
Even in music, just having a song similar results in handing over most of the royalties.

[tricky]

I think one of the original law suits was about the game looking the same but not being as good and some people would then avoid the original. I'm not sure if they win or not, but snapper was originally pacman and had ghosts and pacman!
I'm sure Sega sued Simpsons something for being a crazy taxi ripoff, but could only do it based on there being a hand over the car telling you which way to go which was too close to a pointer over the car in their game!

[bob147]

I think as @tnash alluded to, it was a sufficiently small market that as long as you didn't openly challenge them by using their name, the big publishers were happy to just let it fly.