Hi there, i've stated to making games for iphone. Before i'll create something special, i want to try with one simple game, it helps me to create my own framework, increase experience, etc... So, i want to sell this game, but ...my first "trial" game is tetris-like game. I know that the word "tetris" is registered, like other "tetrimino". So, if i'll change the name different from "tetris" to "crazy blocks" or something like this, not containing "tetro", "tetri" or even "t". Will I have some Legal Issues ? The game flow is almost the same, falling blocks, scores, speed-up on higher levels etc... Please, help. Thanks in advance.

As far as the name goes it's best to avoid anything similar to Tetris as The Tetris Company LLC is notoriously litigious. At least in the U.S the patent situation is murky since the U.S Patent system is horribly broken. Patents that most likely shouldn't be grant are and reversing them is expensive and/or time consuming. I don't know about Latvia though.

Statement from U.S Copyright Office on protection of game rules.

As for legal trouble, if someone wants to sue you, they can. The courts will have to decide the merit of any claims made against you. It's impossible to say if you have legal trouble or not. Some companies and people do abuse the process and the disparity in resources to try and silence critics or get rid of competition.



I am wondering if it's possible to write any non-trivial software without violating a patent.


The Business and Law of Game Development

[Edited by - prh99 on November 26, 2009 4:45:28 PM]

coincidentally just pointed to a tetris example in this thread. Tetris may go after you even if you don't use a similar name. Ideally you want to avoid the falling-blocks-put-together-makes-a-straight-line game considering how much they seem to invest in monitoring.

Quote: Original post by madelelaw
Tetris may go after you even if you don't use a similar name. Ideally you want to avoid the falling-blocks-put-together-makes-a-straight-line game considering how much they seem to invest in monitoring.

That's crazy!

I had no idea that the Tetris people were so aggressive.

And, I was about to give the guy advice to make the game and just change the name :(

Since you're making an iPhone game, then it doesn't matter whether or not you have the legal right to do so.

They will complain to Apple and Apple will pull it from appstore. Apple has done it before, based on claims without merit (Easier to pull the app than to look into each claim) and the wikipedia article about the Tetris Company mentions they already made Apple pull a game from appstore because it wasn't licenced.

You should probably come up with a new idea (or target platform)

So make it, but then don't distribute it. You said yourself that you're making this as practice for real games later on. And you can't exactly expect to make money off a Tetris clone - I'm sure the market is already saturated for the iPhone.

... or you could license it.