Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 148883
please include gnometris in gnome-games
Last modified: 2009-09-21 16:48:24 EDT
I know in the past gnometris has been removed from gnome-games on redhat for trademark/copyright reasons, but is this still valid today? As on gnome 2.8.x, there is no mention of the word "tetris" in any of the ui or the documenation.
I believe the problem is that the Tetris Company go after people for "look and feel" infringement (not just trademark infringement). Whether this will stand up in court is one thing but most people are not willing to have to pay and fight to prove them wrong. See http://www.abednarz.net/tetris.html for some more details.
Hmm but just to go back to sitting on the fence there's a very intersting write up at everything2: http://everything2.com/?node=the+tetris+company
From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris#History_and_legal_issues "According to circulars available from the United States Library of Congress, a game cannot be copyrighted (only patented), which refutes much of TTC's copyright claims on the game, leaving the trademark on "Tetris" as TTC's most significant claim on any government-granted monopoly"
Why was this bug closed without any comment or reason given by a redhat employee?