Awivax.120 net.games.pacman utzoo!decvax!wivax!dyer Tue Apr 13 21:57:17 1982 ATARI policy towards similar games At the risk of starting a long controversy (or maybe it's been mentioned before, I dunno) I'd like to ask what other people think about ATARI's policy of prosecuting individuals or firms that sell software games which resemble their products. We are not dealing with software piracy, in the strict sense. Rather, their intent, if I understand it (and I am very willing to be corrected on this) is to suppress the distribution of "look-alike" games which are completely "original" pieces of software, sharing no code with the ATARI version, but, of course, share a similar appearance or conception. I bring this up to this news group, since "pacman" is now completely "owned" by ATARI in the US. Where do we stand? I have to admit that I was really flabbergasted when I read ATARI's announcements in major newspapers of their intentions, and I don't feel very sympathetic. It's very much a Goliath vs David thing. Can you imagine what furor there would be if AT&T tried to carry out a similar policy towards "UNIX-like" systems? How can they do this? Is there any precedent for their behavior? ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.