1
00:00:04,400 --> 00:00:07,800
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.

2
00:00:12,039 --> 00:00:14,480
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,

3
00:00:14,600 --> 00:00:17,400
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio

4
00:00:17,520 --> 00:00:21,280
Speaker 1: and Holdna Tech Are you. We're going to listen to

5
00:00:21,400 --> 00:00:24,840
Speaker 1: a classic episode of tech Stuff. This one originally published

6
00:00:24,840 --> 00:00:32,640
Speaker 1: on April. It is called the Biggest Lawsuits in Gaming History. Enjoy.

7
00:00:33,520 --> 00:00:37,440
Speaker 1: So these two lawsuits have atari in common as as

8
00:00:37,479 --> 00:00:42,319
Speaker 1: one of the the the participants in said suits, and

9
00:00:42,360 --> 00:00:44,519
Speaker 1: I as I'm so glad you're here to explain not

10
00:00:44,720 --> 00:00:47,960
Speaker 1: just what happened and what are the particulars of the case,

11
00:00:48,040 --> 00:00:53,200
Speaker 1: but why it's important because both of these cases took

12
00:00:53,200 --> 00:00:57,320
Speaker 1: place fairly early on in the era of home video

13
00:00:57,400 --> 00:01:01,600
Speaker 1: games and as a result, would end up really shaping

14
00:01:02,200 --> 00:01:08,000
Speaker 1: the way video games are treated under a copyright law. Yeah. So,

15
00:01:08,240 --> 00:01:11,120
Speaker 1: for those who don't know, I went to law school,

16
00:01:11,400 --> 00:01:14,040
Speaker 1: I graduated, I passed the Barn, New York, States, and

17
00:01:14,200 --> 00:01:16,880
Speaker 1: immediately got a job in technology. Ended up doing that

18
00:01:16,959 --> 00:01:19,920
Speaker 1: for the rest of my career. Um, and so there's

19
00:01:20,000 --> 00:01:22,600
Speaker 1: there's there's a long history of why I became a lawyer.

20
00:01:22,640 --> 00:01:25,560
Speaker 1: You know, parents in first generation American like be be

21
00:01:25,600 --> 00:01:29,240
Speaker 1: a lawyer, or doctor. So the game a law degree. Um,

22
00:01:29,319 --> 00:01:32,400
Speaker 1: and I took intellectual property in school and these cases,

23
00:01:32,440 --> 00:01:34,000
Speaker 1: the ones that we're gonna talk about, were presented to

24
00:01:34,080 --> 00:01:36,560
Speaker 1: me back to back and it was just maddening to

25
00:01:36,560 --> 00:01:39,479
Speaker 1: try to figure out the differences why one case went

26
00:01:39,520 --> 00:01:41,440
Speaker 1: one way and went why one another. And we'll get

27
00:01:41,520 --> 00:01:44,800
Speaker 1: all into that. But I'm really kicking myself because I

28
00:01:44,880 --> 00:01:47,600
Speaker 1: used to have my my books, my notebooks. I'm like,

29
00:01:47,640 --> 00:01:50,720
Speaker 1: I'll never need my briefs anymore, so I chucked them out.

30
00:01:50,920 --> 00:01:53,160
Speaker 1: And so here we go talking about two cases that

31
00:01:53,200 --> 00:01:55,400
Speaker 1: I learned a long time ago. So uh, if there

32
00:01:55,440 --> 00:01:58,200
Speaker 1: are any errors, I apologize. But we have looked over

33
00:01:58,200 --> 00:02:01,240
Speaker 1: the cases of several times day personally, and I've looked

34
00:02:01,240 --> 00:02:04,480
Speaker 1: at two or three times today and written up notes. Again.

35
00:02:04,480 --> 00:02:06,760
Speaker 1: I printed out one of them the right notes, because

36
00:02:06,840 --> 00:02:09,160
Speaker 1: that's how I used to do it back in the day,

37
00:02:09,320 --> 00:02:11,080
Speaker 1: to the point to the point where you have hard

38
00:02:11,200 --> 00:02:14,720
Speaker 1: copy in front of you, I literally have my penciled

39
00:02:14,760 --> 00:02:17,560
Speaker 1: out notes all over based on book briefs, which I

40
00:02:17,639 --> 00:02:19,840
Speaker 1: used to do when I was in school. Wow. So

41
00:02:20,360 --> 00:02:23,120
Speaker 1: the first of the two cases we're talking about, and

42
00:02:23,160 --> 00:02:24,840
Speaker 1: as I has pointed out, these have to do with

43
00:02:25,040 --> 00:02:29,560
Speaker 1: intellectual property with copyright, which is a tricky subject, right Well,

44
00:02:29,600 --> 00:02:33,040
Speaker 1: I've talked about several times on tech stuff, and in general,

45
00:02:33,120 --> 00:02:39,200
Speaker 1: copyright is about making sure someone who creates a work

46
00:02:39,320 --> 00:02:43,200
Speaker 1: of some sort that's in a fixed tangible medium has

47
00:02:43,280 --> 00:02:46,560
Speaker 1: some sort of protection that that you don't have to

48
00:02:46,600 --> 00:02:50,160
Speaker 1: worry about, or rather you have some recourse if someone

49
00:02:50,240 --> 00:02:53,440
Speaker 1: were to try and copy that work you could pursue

50
00:02:53,480 --> 00:02:56,480
Speaker 1: action against them based upon the copyright. It gives you

51
00:02:56,520 --> 00:02:59,799
Speaker 1: that that level of protection, and anything that you set

52
00:02:59,840 --> 00:03:03,880
Speaker 1: down in a fixed tangible medium technically is protected by copyright.

53
00:03:04,280 --> 00:03:08,480
Speaker 1: Registering a copyright, however, is a great idea because then

54
00:03:08,639 --> 00:03:12,160
Speaker 1: there's an official record of said copyright if you should

55
00:03:12,160 --> 00:03:17,240
Speaker 1: ever have cause to, you know, bring that up in court. Um.

56
00:03:17,400 --> 00:03:20,079
Speaker 1: This is one of those things where it really only

57
00:03:20,919 --> 00:03:23,280
Speaker 1: plays out as soon as there is is either a

58
00:03:23,360 --> 00:03:26,600
Speaker 1: lawsuit or the threat of a lawsuit. Otherwise it's kind

59
00:03:26,639 --> 00:03:29,679
Speaker 1: of a it's it's kind of in the background. And

60
00:03:29,760 --> 00:03:32,600
Speaker 1: the first case that we wanted to talk about was

61
00:03:33,120 --> 00:03:36,840
Speaker 1: Atari versus Amusement World, which sounds like the most fun

62
00:03:36,960 --> 00:03:41,400
Speaker 1: lawsuit ever. It definitely does the cases from way back,

63
00:03:43,040 --> 00:03:45,640
Speaker 1: and it was the U. S. District Court in Maryland,

64
00:03:46,200 --> 00:03:49,680
Speaker 1: and uh, it's pretty simple ideas. So we have two

65
00:03:49,680 --> 00:03:52,720
Speaker 1: different companies. We've gotta tar they held the copyright for Asteroids.

66
00:03:53,280 --> 00:03:55,240
Speaker 1: You guys probably heard that game. You've probably seen it,

67
00:03:55,280 --> 00:03:57,640
Speaker 1: you know the saying asteroids. I'm sure you guys have

68
00:03:57,680 --> 00:03:59,560
Speaker 1: a picture in your head. There's a little triangular ship

69
00:03:59,600 --> 00:04:01,680
Speaker 1: and there and their rocks flying at you and you

70
00:04:01,760 --> 00:04:04,800
Speaker 1: blow them up right right until you get blown up

71
00:04:04,800 --> 00:04:07,680
Speaker 1: by either a rock or one of the few little

72
00:04:07,760 --> 00:04:10,720
Speaker 1: enemy spaceships that would occasionally pop up. Yeah. So another

73
00:04:10,720 --> 00:04:13,040
Speaker 1: company called Amusement World, which again is a great name,

74
00:04:13,440 --> 00:04:15,160
Speaker 1: it's not as creative as Atari as that. When I

75
00:04:15,240 --> 00:04:17,320
Speaker 1: listened to the three partner on its are finding out

76
00:04:17,320 --> 00:04:19,279
Speaker 1: where the names came from, I'm like, this is pretty

77
00:04:19,279 --> 00:04:22,599
Speaker 1: awesome to hear. Um. So these guys basically saw the

78
00:04:22,640 --> 00:04:24,840
Speaker 1: idea and they're like, we could make our own game.

79
00:04:25,600 --> 00:04:27,920
Speaker 1: And uh, one of the big things that you're gonna

80
00:04:27,920 --> 00:04:29,960
Speaker 1: get out of this case is that you can't. You

81
00:04:30,000 --> 00:04:33,120
Speaker 1: can't have a monopoly on an idea. So they are

82
00:04:33,160 --> 00:04:35,159
Speaker 1: free to make a game. But as Ali saw this

83
00:04:35,200 --> 00:04:36,719
Speaker 1: game and they're like, wait a second, it's Trangler ship.

84
00:04:36,720 --> 00:04:40,000
Speaker 1: You're blown up rocks, you're totally stealing our stuff and

85
00:04:40,040 --> 00:04:43,120
Speaker 1: we're suing you, right. And another thing to keep in

86
00:04:43,160 --> 00:04:45,719
Speaker 1: mind is this is early enough in the in the

87
00:04:45,800 --> 00:04:49,839
Speaker 1: era of video games that the court had not fully

88
00:04:49,920 --> 00:04:53,520
Speaker 1: decided that video games were something you could totally copy. Right.

89
00:04:53,560 --> 00:04:55,880
Speaker 1: In fact, in the other case we're gonna talk about,

90
00:04:56,320 --> 00:05:00,080
Speaker 1: there's a note in the court's decision that says the

91
00:05:00,440 --> 00:05:03,120
Speaker 1: video games are not something you can fully copyright. But

92
00:05:03,200 --> 00:05:06,520
Speaker 1: there are elements of copyright protection that do extend to

93
00:05:06,600 --> 00:05:09,440
Speaker 1: video games, and it gets into particulars that we're probably

94
00:05:09,440 --> 00:05:11,839
Speaker 1: not going to cover in this in this podcast, but

95
00:05:12,120 --> 00:05:13,760
Speaker 1: just to say that this was kind of a wild

96
00:05:13,880 --> 00:05:18,480
Speaker 1: West era of both the home video game industry and

97
00:05:18,640 --> 00:05:23,520
Speaker 1: of law because technology had outpaced what the legal system

98
00:05:23,920 --> 00:05:27,080
Speaker 1: was ready to cover. And we see that again and again,

99
00:05:27,120 --> 00:05:29,599
Speaker 1: not just in video games obviously, but in all realms

100
00:05:29,600 --> 00:05:32,200
Speaker 1: of technology and law. You see that with things like

101
00:05:32,240 --> 00:05:36,120
Speaker 1: the autonomous cars coming out and people saying, wait a minute,

102
00:05:36,160 --> 00:05:39,120
Speaker 1: how do we what sort of legislation do we need

103
00:05:39,160 --> 00:05:44,320
Speaker 1: to put up to deal with this new reality of technology,

104
00:05:44,560 --> 00:05:47,120
Speaker 1: And it just turns out that, you know, the law

105
00:05:47,200 --> 00:05:52,200
Speaker 1: is something that has to catch up to our changing world. Uh,

106
00:05:52,240 --> 00:05:54,800
Speaker 1: And in this case, you know we had we had

107
00:05:54,839 --> 00:06:00,360
Speaker 1: an interesting uh case brought forth by Atari saying here

108
00:06:00,400 --> 00:06:03,479
Speaker 1: are some of the things that we say, are the

109
00:06:03,520 --> 00:06:06,880
Speaker 1: similarities between our game and this other game called Meteors

110
00:06:07,480 --> 00:06:12,080
Speaker 1: Asteroids and Meteors. I mean already just just with the names.

111
00:06:12,080 --> 00:06:14,880
Speaker 1: You're like, guys, maybe we should come up with a different,

112
00:06:15,320 --> 00:06:18,880
Speaker 1: you know, title, But they court identified a bunch of

113
00:06:18,960 --> 00:06:23,800
Speaker 1: multiple points of similarity. Now, in cases of trying to

114
00:06:23,839 --> 00:06:29,080
Speaker 1: determine whether an author has plagiarized another author, for example,

115
00:06:29,680 --> 00:06:33,560
Speaker 1: often courts will ask for some third party, preferably a

116
00:06:33,680 --> 00:06:36,839
Speaker 1: a the third party that has no interest in the

117
00:06:36,839 --> 00:06:41,840
Speaker 1: outcome of the case, to identify any points of similarity

118
00:06:41,880 --> 00:06:45,119
Speaker 1: and then give his or her opinion as to whether

119
00:06:45,240 --> 00:06:50,200
Speaker 1: or not the points of similarity indicate a case of plagiarism,

120
00:06:50,360 --> 00:06:53,600
Speaker 1: or if, in fact, it could have just been coincidence, because,

121
00:06:54,000 --> 00:06:57,120
Speaker 1: as we're all aware, different people can come up with

122
00:06:57,160 --> 00:06:59,880
Speaker 1: similar ideas that around the same time, and it's not

123
00:07:00,000 --> 00:07:03,440
Speaker 1: always a case of of plagiarism. So here are some

124
00:07:03,480 --> 00:07:07,520
Speaker 1: of the points of similarity. Both games involved the player

125
00:07:07,600 --> 00:07:11,480
Speaker 1: shooting and destroying rocks, and in both games there are

126
00:07:11,480 --> 00:07:15,880
Speaker 1: actually three different sizes of rocks. Those rocks would appear

127
00:07:15,920 --> 00:07:19,280
Speaker 1: in waves, with the initial waves being composed of bigger rocks.

128
00:07:19,880 --> 00:07:23,280
Speaker 1: When you shoot them, they would break into medium sized rocks.

129
00:07:23,280 --> 00:07:26,520
Speaker 1: Medium sized rocks would break into small rocks. Small rocks

130
00:07:26,560 --> 00:07:29,560
Speaker 1: would disappear when you shot them, and the speed of

131
00:07:29,560 --> 00:07:31,960
Speaker 1: the rocks would depend upon their size, so large rocks

132
00:07:32,000 --> 00:07:35,000
Speaker 1: move more slowly than small ones. So as you're spinning

133
00:07:35,040 --> 00:07:38,520
Speaker 1: around with your little ship in both Asteroids and Meteors,

134
00:07:39,520 --> 00:07:42,200
Speaker 1: as you shoot these rocks, they start getting smaller and

135
00:07:42,240 --> 00:07:45,200
Speaker 1: they start moving faster, so you know, you develop your

136
00:07:45,200 --> 00:07:48,520
Speaker 1: strategy around that. Uh. And in both if you got

137
00:07:48,560 --> 00:07:50,920
Speaker 1: hit by a rock game over right, or at least

138
00:07:51,000 --> 00:07:54,440
Speaker 1: your your player life for that one ended, you would

139
00:07:54,480 --> 00:07:58,040
Speaker 1: usually get multiple lives per game. Um. And both games

140
00:07:58,040 --> 00:08:02,040
Speaker 1: had enemy spaceships and UH. The enemy spaceships came in

141
00:08:02,080 --> 00:08:05,080
Speaker 1: two different sizes for both games. The bigger ones were

142
00:08:05,120 --> 00:08:08,600
Speaker 1: worth fewer points than the smaller ones, the idea being

143
00:08:08,600 --> 00:08:10,720
Speaker 1: that the smaller ones are harder to hit, therefore they're

144
00:08:10,720 --> 00:08:14,040
Speaker 1: worth more points. Both the players ships and the enemy

145
00:08:14,080 --> 00:08:18,520
Speaker 1: spaceships could shoot projectiles. Impact would be automatic destruction, which

146
00:08:18,520 --> 00:08:21,400
Speaker 1: would be accompanied by I think they actually said the

147
00:08:21,480 --> 00:08:25,040
Speaker 1: symbol of an explosion, because I mean this is this

148
00:08:25,080 --> 00:08:27,080
Speaker 1: is early days of video games. Guys. You remember, like,

149
00:08:27,680 --> 00:08:29,560
Speaker 1: there's not a heck of a lot you can do. Yeah,

150
00:08:29,680 --> 00:08:32,840
Speaker 1: when it comes to graphically representing anything. So we're talking

151
00:08:32,920 --> 00:08:36,520
Speaker 1: some pretty primitive looking graphics. So it's the stuff that

152
00:08:36,640 --> 00:08:39,680
Speaker 1: gets laid out here in the next case, it actually

153
00:08:39,679 --> 00:08:42,160
Speaker 1: determines how, like we could have so many side scrollers.

154
00:08:42,160 --> 00:08:44,760
Speaker 1: It's just such a bizarre way to go. Yeah, and

155
00:08:44,800 --> 00:08:47,840
Speaker 1: when that's something else that will come up in this

156
00:08:47,920 --> 00:08:52,000
Speaker 1: discussion is that part of the reason the cases turned

157
00:08:52,040 --> 00:08:54,760
Speaker 1: out the way they did is again it's so early

158
00:08:54,880 --> 00:09:00,520
Speaker 1: on in the era of video games that people had

159
00:09:00,559 --> 00:09:03,320
Speaker 1: not really well, one, the technology had not advanced to

160
00:09:03,320 --> 00:09:08,600
Speaker 1: the point where you could have very different depictions of uh,

161
00:09:08,640 --> 00:09:12,440
Speaker 1: you know, different interpretations of the same basic idea. You

162
00:09:12,480 --> 00:09:15,080
Speaker 1: were limited in that because the technology itself was limited.

163
00:09:15,120 --> 00:09:17,200
Speaker 1: So it's not like you could, you know, have one

164
00:09:17,280 --> 00:09:20,360
Speaker 1: that looks like asteroids where you've got this top down

165
00:09:20,440 --> 00:09:23,160
Speaker 1: view of a little triangle shooting rocks, and the other

166
00:09:23,200 --> 00:09:28,680
Speaker 1: one you have a photo realistic, you know, a space

167
00:09:28,720 --> 00:09:31,840
Speaker 1: simulator where you're flying through shooting rocks. Uh. So the

168
00:09:31,880 --> 00:09:35,959
Speaker 1: technology itself was limited, and thus a lot of people

169
00:09:36,040 --> 00:09:39,840
Speaker 1: figured that the ability to express an idea itself was

170
00:09:39,920 --> 00:09:43,640
Speaker 1: limited because of that. Um, But there's some other similarities

171
00:09:43,679 --> 00:09:46,080
Speaker 1: that I thought were kind of like, well, there's no

172
00:09:46,200 --> 00:09:50,720
Speaker 1: reason that you could argue one game would have to

173
00:09:50,800 --> 00:09:55,400
Speaker 1: have this particular element versus the other. For example, both

174
00:09:55,440 --> 00:09:59,600
Speaker 1: games had a two tone beeping noise that increased in tempo.

175
00:10:00,080 --> 00:10:04,560
Speaker 1: Is the game progress, so like, uh, and we just

176
00:10:04,600 --> 00:10:08,680
Speaker 1: get faster and faster. Um. Both games had scores for

177
00:10:08,720 --> 00:10:12,080
Speaker 1: players that were displayed in the same sections of the screen. So,

178
00:10:12,160 --> 00:10:14,199
Speaker 1: in other words, like the player one score would be

179
00:10:14,200 --> 00:10:16,120
Speaker 1: in the upper left corner and the player to score

180
00:10:16,160 --> 00:10:20,320
Speaker 1: be the upper right corner. Both games had a thrust

181
00:10:20,360 --> 00:10:24,000
Speaker 1: button that would let the player's ship move in whatever

182
00:10:24,080 --> 00:10:26,880
Speaker 1: direction it happened to be facing at the time. Um,

183
00:10:27,720 --> 00:10:31,480
Speaker 1: have you ever played Asteroids like the arcade version of Asteroids?

184
00:10:31,960 --> 00:10:34,959
Speaker 1: I've actually played the home version of of Asteroids. I

185
00:10:34,960 --> 00:10:37,560
Speaker 1: don't think I've ever played it in the arcade. Actually, yeah,

186
00:10:37,600 --> 00:10:40,760
Speaker 1: the arcade version was tough. I mean, this would be

187
00:10:40,800 --> 00:10:43,160
Speaker 1: the home version because it is a tari I believe

188
00:10:43,200 --> 00:10:45,280
Speaker 1: it's not the video game version. Maybe it could be

189
00:10:45,360 --> 00:10:47,679
Speaker 1: the video game version because you did have both divisions.

190
00:10:47,720 --> 00:10:52,760
Speaker 1: But um, the the buttons on the Asteroids game were

191
00:10:53,200 --> 00:10:55,280
Speaker 1: what would allow you to turn the ship left, turn

192
00:10:55,360 --> 00:10:58,680
Speaker 1: the ship right, or use thrust? Um Obviously you would

193
00:10:58,760 --> 00:11:02,880
Speaker 1: just use a a direction on your joystick. Usually I

194
00:11:02,880 --> 00:11:06,080
Speaker 1: think pressing up would give you the thrust in the

195
00:11:06,160 --> 00:11:10,760
Speaker 1: home version. Ah, but in both versions, if you released

196
00:11:10,840 --> 00:11:14,400
Speaker 1: the thrust, then gradually your ship would come to a halt,

197
00:11:14,480 --> 00:11:18,960
Speaker 1: although the court did did actually notice that this happens

198
00:11:19,000 --> 00:11:23,240
Speaker 1: more quickly in meteors than in Asteroids. Uh. And both games,

199
00:11:23,240 --> 00:11:26,800
Speaker 1: at ten thousand points, you'd get an extra life, and

200
00:11:26,920 --> 00:11:30,720
Speaker 1: each successfully completed wave of rocks initiates a new wave,

201
00:11:31,200 --> 00:11:33,920
Speaker 1: and each new wave has more rocks in it than

202
00:11:34,000 --> 00:11:37,600
Speaker 1: the previous wave. So those were the similarities that the

203
00:11:37,640 --> 00:11:40,240
Speaker 1: court noticed between these two games, and there are a

204
00:11:40,320 --> 00:11:43,800
Speaker 1: lot of them. I mean, there's the very basic nature

205
00:11:43,960 --> 00:11:47,559
Speaker 1: of the game seems identical in these cases, right, I mean,

206
00:11:48,480 --> 00:11:50,559
Speaker 1: it would be hard for me to argue otherwise I

207
00:11:50,559 --> 00:11:54,480
Speaker 1: would think, yeah, I mean, if if it's kind of

208
00:11:54,480 --> 00:11:56,319
Speaker 1: like modern games, you're thinking of the Call of Duty

209
00:11:56,400 --> 00:11:59,800
Speaker 1: versus any other battlefield game, you think of any any

210
00:11:59,840 --> 00:12:02,440
Speaker 1: kind of war game, they're all kind of the same.

211
00:12:02,480 --> 00:12:05,360
Speaker 1: But why is that even allowed? And uh, there are

212
00:12:05,480 --> 00:12:09,640
Speaker 1: differences in these two games, Meteors and Asteroids. So Asteroids

213
00:12:09,720 --> 00:12:14,000
Speaker 1: had this, uh had a black field underneath the actual game,

214
00:12:14,280 --> 00:12:16,640
Speaker 1: but in Meteors you had this star field and the

215
00:12:16,840 --> 00:12:19,000
Speaker 1: look of distant stars. And this is kind of really

216
00:12:19,040 --> 00:12:20,480
Speaker 1: pushing it because when you're looking at them, if you

217
00:12:20,480 --> 00:12:23,320
Speaker 1: haven't seen the photos of this this game, you'll see

218
00:12:23,320 --> 00:12:26,440
Speaker 1: they're just basically dots. That's kind of neat. Asteroids is

219
00:12:26,440 --> 00:12:28,800
Speaker 1: black and white, and Meteors was in color, and that

220
00:12:28,880 --> 00:12:32,840
Speaker 1: was pretty different. Meteors also had some shading on the

221
00:12:32,880 --> 00:12:35,360
Speaker 1: spaceship and the rocks, so kind of had more dimension

222
00:12:35,400 --> 00:12:38,600
Speaker 1: because the Asteroids is pretty flat looking when it comes

223
00:12:38,600 --> 00:12:41,800
Speaker 1: to ships and rocks, almost like a schematic drawing, like

224
00:12:41,880 --> 00:12:45,439
Speaker 1: it's it's it's or almost abstract in a way, because

225
00:12:45,480 --> 00:12:48,199
Speaker 1: the rocks all look the same and they all just

226
00:12:48,320 --> 00:12:50,400
Speaker 1: kind of float at you, and then you shoot them

227
00:12:50,400 --> 00:12:53,920
Speaker 1: and now they're they're different sized, but the shapes are

228
00:12:53,920 --> 00:12:57,760
Speaker 1: still very much the same and they're still floating at you.

229
00:12:57,840 --> 00:13:01,319
Speaker 1: It's not you know, there's no real sense of, uh,

230
00:13:01,400 --> 00:13:05,760
Speaker 1: the dimensionality in the original Asteroids game. I really like

231
00:13:05,800 --> 00:13:08,000
Speaker 1: the element that Meteors starts off. When you start off

232
00:13:08,000 --> 00:13:10,640
Speaker 1: the game, there's an animation of you blasting off of Earth.

233
00:13:11,160 --> 00:13:13,400
Speaker 1: Compare that to Asteroids. You just start and you're just

234
00:13:13,520 --> 00:13:16,520
Speaker 1: in the in the field. Time to go. Um, you've

235
00:13:16,520 --> 00:13:19,520
Speaker 1: got the game. Meteors is actually faster in general, and

236
00:13:19,520 --> 00:13:21,760
Speaker 1: it moves, and you have a different way of shooting

237
00:13:21,800 --> 00:13:24,480
Speaker 1: as well. You could can you could shoot a lot

238
00:13:24,600 --> 00:13:28,000
Speaker 1: more I think continuously compared to Asteroids. Right, Asteroids was

239
00:13:28,040 --> 00:13:30,840
Speaker 1: like a burst fire thing. You could fire a few shots,

240
00:13:31,240 --> 00:13:33,560
Speaker 1: but then you had to weight. It's almost like a

241
00:13:33,600 --> 00:13:36,840
Speaker 1: recharge period. Have I missing anything else? So that's are

242
00:13:36,880 --> 00:13:39,920
Speaker 1: the main ones. That's the main ones. I mean, uh,

243
00:13:39,960 --> 00:13:42,480
Speaker 1: you know there were There was also the fact that

244
00:13:42,520 --> 00:13:46,360
Speaker 1: the Meteors and meteor and Meteors rather could tumble like

245
00:13:46,640 --> 00:13:49,719
Speaker 1: they actually they actually seemed to rotate as they were

246
00:13:49,720 --> 00:13:52,720
Speaker 1: coming towards you, whereas the if you watch the old

247
00:13:52,760 --> 00:13:57,200
Speaker 1: Asteroids game, those shapes just they maintain their same orientation

248
00:13:57,360 --> 00:14:00,959
Speaker 1: as they move across. So there was that too. So

249
00:14:01,240 --> 00:14:06,640
Speaker 1: there were some definite improvements on the game. So Amusement

250
00:14:06,720 --> 00:14:11,480
Speaker 1: World had to defend itself against these claims of copyright infringement.

251
00:14:11,480 --> 00:14:14,559
Speaker 1: They tried a couple of different tactics. The first thing

252
00:14:14,600 --> 00:14:19,400
Speaker 1: they tried was, uh, they said that Atari's copyright on

253
00:14:19,480 --> 00:14:23,560
Speaker 1: Asteroids was invalid in this case because of the way

254
00:14:23,600 --> 00:14:28,280
Speaker 1: they registered their copyright. So they said that Atari had

255
00:14:28,280 --> 00:14:32,960
Speaker 1: registered Asteroids copyright as an audio visual work, not as

256
00:14:33,000 --> 00:14:36,960
Speaker 1: a literary work, and that as a result, the copyright

257
00:14:37,160 --> 00:14:40,800
Speaker 1: wasn't valid. They said that Atari had submitted essentially a

258
00:14:40,960 --> 00:14:46,000
Speaker 1: film video of one out of a possible infinite variations

259
00:14:46,080 --> 00:14:49,520
Speaker 1: of a single game. So in other words, they captured

260
00:14:49,560 --> 00:14:54,760
Speaker 1: gameplay footage of Asteroids, and that particular gameplay footage was

261
00:14:54,800 --> 00:15:00,880
Speaker 1: being sent as as part of the the the work

262
00:15:01,160 --> 00:15:05,560
Speaker 1: that Atari was submitting to get this copyright, and I

263
00:15:05,600 --> 00:15:09,720
Speaker 1: guess Amusement World was essentially saying, well, technically, wouldn't that

264
00:15:09,760 --> 00:15:13,160
Speaker 1: just give copyright to that specific film? Like that was

265
00:15:13,240 --> 00:15:16,280
Speaker 1: that's such a great argument. It's taking like you were saying,

266
00:15:16,280 --> 00:15:18,080
Speaker 1: this is the wild West, it's the early days of

267
00:15:18,240 --> 00:15:21,520
Speaker 1: video games, and how are they protected. So the idea

268
00:15:21,640 --> 00:15:24,280
Speaker 1: that that Amusement World is pushing us wait a second,

269
00:15:24,320 --> 00:15:28,120
Speaker 1: that's a tape or recording. You definitely have protection for that,

270
00:15:28,200 --> 00:15:31,440
Speaker 1: but you're suing us about the game itself. And the

271
00:15:31,480 --> 00:15:34,280
Speaker 1: court was like wait, wait, wait a second, Okay, now

272
00:15:34,680 --> 00:15:38,280
Speaker 1: they did uh put the work in a tangible medium

273
00:15:38,320 --> 00:15:40,480
Speaker 1: and that happens to be the circuitry, and it's not

274
00:15:40,640 --> 00:15:44,360
Speaker 1: so easy to just send us an arcade cabinet. This

275
00:15:44,440 --> 00:15:46,560
Speaker 1: is the way it used to be. Yeah, yeah, because

276
00:15:46,560 --> 00:15:49,080
Speaker 1: the wrong trip. I mean, the game is hard coded

277
00:15:49,800 --> 00:15:53,480
Speaker 1: on a a a circuit board, and that circuit board

278
00:15:53,520 --> 00:15:55,640
Speaker 1: is only useful if you haven't connected up to the

279
00:15:55,680 --> 00:15:58,760
Speaker 1: rest of the system. So yeah, I mean you would

280
00:15:58,800 --> 00:16:02,360
Speaker 1: have to have had a tory send a full console

281
00:16:02,840 --> 00:16:06,120
Speaker 1: like I mean a full like Atari cabinet out to

282
00:16:06,200 --> 00:16:09,600
Speaker 1: the Patent office that or rather the copyright office, and

283
00:16:09,880 --> 00:16:13,800
Speaker 1: uh deliver that and say like, here's our fixed tangible medium.

284
00:16:13,880 --> 00:16:15,600
Speaker 1: And hilariously, I know a lot of people think the

285
00:16:15,640 --> 00:16:18,560
Speaker 1: laws kind of messed up and it allows for absurd results.

286
00:16:19,080 --> 00:16:21,640
Speaker 1: If this kind of actual event that's happening right now

287
00:16:21,640 --> 00:16:24,000
Speaker 1: we're talking about, if they if Atari had to send

288
00:16:24,040 --> 00:16:26,600
Speaker 1: an actual cabinet every single time it made a game,

289
00:16:27,160 --> 00:16:30,960
Speaker 1: that would cause such a ludicrous amount of storage requirements

290
00:16:30,960 --> 00:16:33,720
Speaker 1: by the government it would make no sense. It would

291
00:16:33,760 --> 00:16:36,880
Speaker 1: can you imagine filing these arcades? Well, it would have

292
00:16:36,960 --> 00:16:39,600
Speaker 1: made the copyright office a much more fun place to work.

293
00:16:40,720 --> 00:16:44,240
Speaker 1: It would be a great, fantastic break area where you like,

294
00:16:44,280 --> 00:16:46,880
Speaker 1: we guess, guess what we got? This other game hasn't

295
00:16:46,880 --> 00:16:51,440
Speaker 1: even come out in our gades yet. Um, you know,

296
00:16:51,520 --> 00:16:54,560
Speaker 1: it seemed to me this this is the argument I

297
00:16:54,560 --> 00:16:57,120
Speaker 1: would make with this, Like if you were trying to

298
00:16:57,120 --> 00:17:00,440
Speaker 1: to say, like, well, what is this similar to? Let's

299
00:17:00,440 --> 00:17:04,000
Speaker 1: say that I write a play and, for some reason

300
00:17:04,400 --> 00:17:08,320
Speaker 1: that I cannot even come up with right now, I

301
00:17:08,400 --> 00:17:12,480
Speaker 1: submit my play to the copyright office, not by sending

302
00:17:12,600 --> 00:17:15,919
Speaker 1: in a script to to be copied, you know, to

303
00:17:16,000 --> 00:17:19,560
Speaker 1: register the copyright, but rather I put on a performance

304
00:17:19,760 --> 00:17:25,560
Speaker 1: of the play and then I record the performance on

305
00:17:26,119 --> 00:17:28,680
Speaker 1: using a video camera or whatever, and I send that

306
00:17:28,800 --> 00:17:32,399
Speaker 1: in to be copyright. That you could argue like, well,

307
00:17:32,440 --> 00:17:35,640
Speaker 1: you're copyrighting the performance of this play, but the play

308
00:17:35,640 --> 00:17:38,560
Speaker 1: itself you still haven't registered. That's kind of the argument

309
00:17:38,560 --> 00:17:43,280
Speaker 1: Amusement World was making. And ultimately the court dismissed this

310
00:17:43,440 --> 00:17:46,720
Speaker 1: argument and said, all right, you know, for for practicality sake,

311
00:17:47,680 --> 00:17:50,440
Speaker 1: just for the same reasons that I as was mentioning earlier,

312
00:17:50,960 --> 00:17:54,760
Speaker 1: we have to draw the line somewhere and a video

313
00:17:54,960 --> 00:18:00,080
Speaker 1: depicting gameplay footage is going to be differentiated from a

314
00:18:00,240 --> 00:18:04,399
Speaker 1: film in that we're not saying that this one video

315
00:18:05,480 --> 00:18:09,320
Speaker 1: representation of the game is the only thing that is

316
00:18:09,400 --> 00:18:14,040
Speaker 1: protected under copyright because it's ludicrous. But but it could

317
00:18:14,040 --> 00:18:17,440
Speaker 1: have gone the other way. That could have been a

318
00:18:17,480 --> 00:18:19,760
Speaker 1: first case where they're saying, actually, you're right, didn't the

319
00:18:19,840 --> 00:18:24,200
Speaker 1: necessarcuit board. Um, well, no, you're right, there's no copyright

320
00:18:24,200 --> 00:18:26,919
Speaker 1: protection and definite your copyright covers a heck of a

321
00:18:26,960 --> 00:18:30,800
Speaker 1: lot of things, include including derivative works. So if John

322
00:18:30,840 --> 00:18:34,399
Speaker 1: Fannitz end in that recording, if I transcribed it and

323
00:18:34,480 --> 00:18:36,280
Speaker 1: go ha ha, I can sell this because you didn't

324
00:18:36,280 --> 00:18:40,000
Speaker 1: copyright the actual script, Clearly it's derivative of what you've done.

325
00:18:40,160 --> 00:18:43,399
Speaker 1: So that's it's supposed to reward the content creator. It's

326
00:18:43,440 --> 00:18:47,920
Speaker 1: supposed to be about furthering uh society, because you when

327
00:18:47,960 --> 00:18:50,280
Speaker 1: you write something, you're protected and you can actually enjoy

328
00:18:50,320 --> 00:18:52,440
Speaker 1: the fruits of your labor. And that's the whole point

329
00:18:52,440 --> 00:18:55,560
Speaker 1: of copyright in a nutshell. Yeah, and it and it

330
00:18:55,600 --> 00:18:58,560
Speaker 1: does get complicated. I mean, using that other example of

331
00:18:58,600 --> 00:19:01,560
Speaker 1: the play and shooting a video, let's say that I

332
00:19:01,560 --> 00:19:04,680
Speaker 1: haven't sent in the script for copyright yet, I as

333
00:19:04,760 --> 00:19:07,119
Speaker 1: comes to a rehearsal of this play that has not

334
00:19:07,200 --> 00:19:10,959
Speaker 1: yet been copyrighted. He video tapes the rehearsal and copyrights

335
00:19:10,960 --> 00:19:13,800
Speaker 1: the videotape, and now suddenly he's got a registered copyright,

336
00:19:13,840 --> 00:19:16,879
Speaker 1: assuming that it's granted, he has a registered copyright for

337
00:19:16,920 --> 00:19:22,280
Speaker 1: this thing. I haven't copyrighted my script, and his registration

338
00:19:22,520 --> 00:19:25,280
Speaker 1: would predate anything I would send in, which would cause

339
00:19:25,320 --> 00:19:28,720
Speaker 1: further complications. So you know, the whole point of this

340
00:19:28,920 --> 00:19:32,359
Speaker 1: is to try and create as clear a record of

341
00:19:32,400 --> 00:19:36,399
Speaker 1: ownership as possible. But if you don't do your part

342
00:19:36,520 --> 00:19:40,399
Speaker 1: in that, then you can't expect to have the protection

343
00:19:40,920 --> 00:19:44,200
Speaker 1: that it would grant you. So uh, in this case,

344
00:19:44,240 --> 00:19:47,959
Speaker 1: I guess it was a good thing that the court said, hey, uh,

345
00:19:48,600 --> 00:19:51,920
Speaker 1: the audio visual thing is not um, not a barrier.

346
00:19:52,000 --> 00:19:54,960
Speaker 1: It's not something that is going to count against Atari

347
00:19:55,000 --> 00:19:58,680
Speaker 1: in this case. But Amusement World then had to change

348
00:19:58,680 --> 00:20:02,600
Speaker 1: its tactics and said it Uh. What Attari was trying

349
00:20:02,640 --> 00:20:07,479
Speaker 1: to do was claim copyright protection of the idea of

350
00:20:07,520 --> 00:20:10,280
Speaker 1: a video game in which the player tries to survive

351
00:20:10,560 --> 00:20:16,200
Speaker 1: encounters with asteroids and enemy spaceships. Who knew that video

352
00:20:16,280 --> 00:20:19,240
Speaker 1: gaming could be so litigious? And I'll have to do

353
00:20:19,280 --> 00:20:21,359
Speaker 1: a follow up episode to this one at some point,

354
00:20:21,560 --> 00:20:25,240
Speaker 1: because there's more to it. But before we get ahead

355
00:20:25,240 --> 00:20:27,160
Speaker 1: of ourselves, let's take a quick break and be back

356
00:20:27,200 --> 00:20:37,920
Speaker 1: for more of this classic episode. So this is where

357
00:20:37,960 --> 00:20:43,199
Speaker 1: we get into another interesting, uh facet of copyright, because,

358
00:20:43,920 --> 00:20:48,280
Speaker 1: as it turns out, an idea by itself is not

359
00:20:48,560 --> 00:20:52,080
Speaker 1: something that's guaranteed protection. Yeah, that's the whole thing about

360
00:20:52,160 --> 00:20:55,640
Speaker 1: idea versus the expression of an idea. And you're gonna

361
00:20:55,680 --> 00:20:59,760
Speaker 1: get familiar with this jeweled be pendant and what this

362
00:21:00,080 --> 00:21:03,439
Speaker 1: this thing is. If there was this lawsuit, I'll do

363
00:21:03,480 --> 00:21:06,800
Speaker 1: it real quick. There was one manufacturer of a thing

364
00:21:06,880 --> 00:21:08,320
Speaker 1: of it, like a brooch or a pin that a

365
00:21:08,359 --> 00:21:11,800
Speaker 1: person would wear. It was a BE that had jewels

366
00:21:11,800 --> 00:21:14,240
Speaker 1: on it. So somebody saw that idea, Hey, that's a

367
00:21:14,280 --> 00:21:17,440
Speaker 1: really cool idea. I'm gonna make the same thing. So

368
00:21:18,840 --> 00:21:21,959
Speaker 1: the first person who made the be jeweled B said, no,

369
00:21:22,160 --> 00:21:25,439
Speaker 1: I'm suing you for a copyright that's mine. And the

370
00:21:25,520 --> 00:21:29,680
Speaker 1: court said, listen, there's only one way to show a

371
00:21:29,760 --> 00:21:32,520
Speaker 1: jeweled B. That's it. Now. Granted we could have a

372
00:21:32,520 --> 00:21:35,520
Speaker 1: different pattern on the actual B, but a B, if

373
00:21:35,560 --> 00:21:37,840
Speaker 1: you're trying to keep it realistic, is going to have

374
00:21:38,200 --> 00:21:41,119
Speaker 1: the black and yellow or brown and yellow kind of stripes.

375
00:21:41,160 --> 00:21:44,160
Speaker 1: It's gonna have wings. There are elements you cannot change

376
00:21:44,240 --> 00:21:46,960
Speaker 1: about this, and there's only one true way to do this.

377
00:21:47,560 --> 00:21:50,320
Speaker 1: In that case, you do the first person does have

378
00:21:50,359 --> 00:21:53,240
Speaker 1: a copyright on that actual item, but it's not exactly

379
00:21:53,320 --> 00:21:56,320
Speaker 1: terribly strong. Another person can actually make the same thing

380
00:21:56,800 --> 00:21:58,880
Speaker 1: also have a copyright on it, which sounds a little

381
00:21:58,880 --> 00:22:01,439
Speaker 1: bit bizarre if you think about it. But because you

382
00:22:01,480 --> 00:22:06,440
Speaker 1: can't copyright the idea, this is free to copy and

383
00:22:06,760 --> 00:22:08,280
Speaker 1: you know you still have a copyright, it's just such

384
00:22:08,280 --> 00:22:12,240
Speaker 1: a weak, uh week copyright that it's it's very very strange.

385
00:22:12,400 --> 00:22:15,000
Speaker 1: And that's basically we gets applied to this case. Yeah, yeah,

386
00:22:15,400 --> 00:22:19,320
Speaker 1: this this idea that okay, so the idea itself is

387
00:22:19,320 --> 00:22:23,320
Speaker 1: not copyrightable. That there you could have the reasonable expectation

388
00:22:23,920 --> 00:22:26,879
Speaker 1: that different people would want to create a game based

389
00:22:26,920 --> 00:22:32,040
Speaker 1: on this same kernel of an idea. The argument then becomes, well,

390
00:22:32,240 --> 00:22:35,760
Speaker 1: how many different ways are there to express that idea?

391
00:22:36,160 --> 00:22:38,520
Speaker 1: If it turns out there's really only one method of

392
00:22:38,560 --> 00:22:42,840
Speaker 1: doing it, you can't truly have protection of that because

393
00:22:43,640 --> 00:22:46,520
Speaker 1: it would be silly, right if it's it's only if

394
00:22:46,560 --> 00:22:50,720
Speaker 1: there are multiple ways to express that idea that you

395
00:22:50,720 --> 00:22:53,919
Speaker 1: you could argue, well, this person copied you, and they

396
00:22:53,920 --> 00:22:56,719
Speaker 1: didn't have to. They could have expressed that same idea

397
00:22:56,760 --> 00:23:01,800
Speaker 1: in a totally different and novel way. So therefore they

398
00:23:01,920 --> 00:23:07,640
Speaker 1: are they are actively violating your copyright. You have a legitimate, uh,

399
00:23:08,000 --> 00:23:11,159
Speaker 1: legitimate complaint. So what the court had to decide in

400
00:23:11,160 --> 00:23:16,600
Speaker 1: this case was, did what the stuff that Amusement World

401
00:23:16,600 --> 00:23:22,520
Speaker 1: did by creating meteors? Did they in fact copy Atari

402
00:23:22,640 --> 00:23:27,960
Speaker 1: or did they simply employ the same ideas Because there

403
00:23:28,040 --> 00:23:33,159
Speaker 1: was really only that way to express a game where

404
00:23:33,240 --> 00:23:37,720
Speaker 1: you are trying to maneuver a spacecraft through an asteroid

405
00:23:37,800 --> 00:23:41,639
Speaker 1: belt while you're being shot at by enemy spaceships, And

406
00:23:42,200 --> 00:23:45,240
Speaker 1: that must have been a really interesting deliberation to go

407
00:23:45,400 --> 00:23:48,560
Speaker 1: through and say, all right, well, which one elements here

408
00:23:49,160 --> 00:23:51,919
Speaker 1: do we think are essentially universal in the sense that

409
00:23:52,000 --> 00:23:54,600
Speaker 1: anyone who wanted to make a game that represented this

410
00:23:54,720 --> 00:23:57,920
Speaker 1: kind of idea would have to do it this way

411
00:23:58,200 --> 00:24:02,119
Speaker 1: versus which one of these ideas could you do in

412
00:24:02,280 --> 00:24:05,679
Speaker 1: a myriad of other ways. But they chose to copy

413
00:24:05,720 --> 00:24:11,040
Speaker 1: Atari's method, and in this case it ended up um

414
00:24:11,240 --> 00:24:17,080
Speaker 1: kind of a favoring Amusement World. Amusement World UH is

415
00:24:17,119 --> 00:24:20,960
Speaker 1: not found guilty of copy infringement in this case. Because

416
00:24:21,160 --> 00:24:25,919
Speaker 1: there is apparently the idea expression unity is true in

417
00:24:25,960 --> 00:24:28,280
Speaker 1: this particular case. That's what the court's saying. They're saying, look,

418
00:24:28,600 --> 00:24:30,160
Speaker 1: there is like one way to do this. So if

419
00:24:30,160 --> 00:24:33,000
Speaker 1: you had a spaceship and you're going to blow up

420
00:24:33,000 --> 00:24:36,520
Speaker 1: a rock in this in space, those rocks have to

421
00:24:36,560 --> 00:24:38,920
Speaker 1: disappear in one of two or three different ways. Okay,

422
00:24:38,920 --> 00:24:41,520
Speaker 1: it's gonna break up in one piece, two pieces, three pieces.

423
00:24:41,800 --> 00:24:44,160
Speaker 1: That breaks up into a million pieces. The game becomes

424
00:24:44,160 --> 00:24:47,760
Speaker 1: somewhat unplayable because you'll just lose all the time. They're

425
00:24:47,760 --> 00:24:50,240
Speaker 1: saying that both games start off somewhat easy, which is

426
00:24:50,280 --> 00:24:53,119
Speaker 1: to encourage people to play the game. That's something that

427
00:24:53,160 --> 00:24:55,440
Speaker 1: you can't really say. We'll start the game really hard

428
00:24:55,640 --> 00:24:58,960
Speaker 1: and that will be a different game. So there's enough

429
00:24:59,040 --> 00:25:02,959
Speaker 1: elements that in this case, the course saying, look, if

430
00:25:03,000 --> 00:25:05,919
Speaker 1: you're flying around in space and that you're blown up rocks,

431
00:25:06,840 --> 00:25:08,879
Speaker 1: this is kind of the only way to do it,

432
00:25:08,960 --> 00:25:13,399
Speaker 1: because you just there's no way around this. And I

433
00:25:13,440 --> 00:25:18,600
Speaker 1: wanted this quickly mentioned that both of these guys Amusement

434
00:25:18,640 --> 00:25:22,040
Speaker 1: World in Natari both have copyright protection. It's that the

435
00:25:22,040 --> 00:25:26,160
Speaker 1: protection doesn't give them a monopoly because of the idea

436
00:25:26,600 --> 00:25:29,000
Speaker 1: expression unity. That's what the thing is. It's about a

437
00:25:29,040 --> 00:25:32,560
Speaker 1: monopoly on something more so than it is protection, because

438
00:25:32,800 --> 00:25:36,440
Speaker 1: even though these games are very similar and they act

439
00:25:36,480 --> 00:25:40,240
Speaker 1: in a very similar way, they both still have copyrights

440
00:25:40,359 --> 00:25:44,000
Speaker 1: on those products, which is really I mean, this is

441
00:25:44,080 --> 00:25:47,600
Speaker 1: that's mind bending to me, particularly when we get to

442
00:25:47,640 --> 00:25:51,280
Speaker 1: the discussion of the second case, where we start saying,

443
00:25:51,480 --> 00:25:55,520
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I don't on a very like high level,

444
00:25:56,359 --> 00:25:58,520
Speaker 1: it could be hard to distinguish between the two the

445
00:25:58,560 --> 00:26:02,800
Speaker 1: differences that mark one case versus the other, because, as

446
00:26:02,840 --> 00:26:06,640
Speaker 1: it turns out, the court decisions in the second case

447
00:26:06,680 --> 00:26:09,800
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about go in a in a

448
00:26:09,840 --> 00:26:12,920
Speaker 1: different direction than the one we just mentioned. And that's

449
00:26:13,040 --> 00:26:15,400
Speaker 1: that's probably why I mean, I mean, I imagine that's

450
00:26:15,440 --> 00:26:18,360
Speaker 1: why you when you were studying law, you had these

451
00:26:18,400 --> 00:26:22,320
Speaker 1: two cases kind of presented together as a way of,

452
00:26:22,840 --> 00:26:28,439
Speaker 1: uh illustrating this this idea of um, the copyright of

453
00:26:28,520 --> 00:26:31,800
Speaker 1: the expression of an idea versus the idea itself. Yeah,

454
00:26:31,840 --> 00:26:33,800
Speaker 1: like I said in the beginning, this was maddening to

455
00:26:33,840 --> 00:26:36,960
Speaker 1: go back to back with the case. We the next case,

456
00:26:37,240 --> 00:26:40,240
Speaker 1: this is two. It's decided by the United States Court

457
00:26:40,240 --> 00:26:43,520
Speaker 1: of Appeal, Seventh Circuit and the Satari versus North American

458
00:26:43,560 --> 00:26:46,680
Speaker 1: Phillips consumer like Finance Corps. You might know them as

459
00:26:46,680 --> 00:26:50,200
Speaker 1: Phillips in the in the case, they are constantly called

460
00:26:50,240 --> 00:26:53,520
Speaker 1: North American because that's just the shorthand eight two. That's

461
00:26:53,520 --> 00:26:55,280
Speaker 1: just the way it was. And on top of that,

462
00:26:55,320 --> 00:26:58,119
Speaker 1: Phillips happened to be the maker or something called The Odyssey,

463
00:26:58,200 --> 00:27:00,720
Speaker 1: which I'm sure not only have I heard it discussed

464
00:27:00,720 --> 00:27:03,320
Speaker 1: on tech stuff. I kind of remember the Odyssey because

465
00:27:03,320 --> 00:27:05,800
Speaker 1: I remember the actual ads in magazines and I'm like,

466
00:27:05,880 --> 00:27:08,480
Speaker 1: what's an Odyssey? So here's the thing. I think I

467
00:27:08,480 --> 00:27:12,720
Speaker 1: actually owned the game that's in question. Here, Yeah, the

468
00:27:12,760 --> 00:27:15,040
Speaker 1: game of question. Here's uh, there's there's two games, and

469
00:27:16,600 --> 00:27:20,480
Speaker 1: has got the Atari has in this particular world, Atari

470
00:27:20,600 --> 00:27:24,320
Speaker 1: has a Midway have the rights to make a pac

471
00:27:24,400 --> 00:27:26,760
Speaker 1: Man game? Who owns the copyright on Pacman at this

472
00:27:26,760 --> 00:27:31,399
Speaker 1: point Namco? So Namco had the Namco owns the game,

473
00:27:31,600 --> 00:27:35,760
Speaker 1: but uh, Midway and Atari had the United States the

474
00:27:35,960 --> 00:27:41,639
Speaker 1: the exclusive United States rights to pac Man. So you

475
00:27:41,680 --> 00:27:45,399
Speaker 1: could think of Atari almost being a a you know,

476
00:27:45,440 --> 00:27:50,320
Speaker 1: like the representation of Namco in the US. Because of

477
00:27:50,440 --> 00:27:54,080
Speaker 1: the way that games would be published and then distributed globally,

478
00:27:54,640 --> 00:27:58,520
Speaker 1: so while Namco technically is the owner of pac Man,

479
00:27:58,840 --> 00:28:03,600
Speaker 1: Atari could act in that capacity within the United States. Yeah,

480
00:28:03,600 --> 00:28:05,439
Speaker 1: that's like the whole point of copyright. You have the right.

481
00:28:05,520 --> 00:28:07,840
Speaker 1: Namco has the right, and they own this this character.

482
00:28:07,880 --> 00:28:10,960
Speaker 1: They own every derivative work, and they're like, hey, listen,

483
00:28:11,080 --> 00:28:13,200
Speaker 1: now that we have this, we can sell the license

484
00:28:13,200 --> 00:28:15,400
Speaker 1: to somebody else to do something with it. So that's

485
00:28:15,440 --> 00:28:17,520
Speaker 1: one of the reason why people are ferociously fighting about this,

486
00:28:17,560 --> 00:28:21,120
Speaker 1: because they want to have the exclusive right. Atari paid

487
00:28:21,119 --> 00:28:23,679
Speaker 1: money for these rights and they don't. They don't want

488
00:28:23,680 --> 00:28:28,240
Speaker 1: to lose market share because Phillips decides to make a

489
00:28:28,280 --> 00:28:31,800
Speaker 1: better pack Man game. Um, so this this game that

490
00:28:31,880 --> 00:28:35,639
Speaker 1: eventually comes out. It's called Casey Munchkin, a game I

491
00:28:35,680 --> 00:28:39,160
Speaker 1: had never heard of before, and I had not I thought,

492
00:28:39,160 --> 00:28:41,400
Speaker 1: I swore when I saw that you had put this

493
00:28:41,640 --> 00:28:45,040
Speaker 1: as one of the lawsuits we were going to talk about.

494
00:28:45,280 --> 00:28:48,040
Speaker 1: This was before we had decided just to focus on Atari.

495
00:28:48,680 --> 00:28:52,280
Speaker 1: I saw the name Casey Munchkin, and I thought, I've

496
00:28:52,320 --> 00:28:55,480
Speaker 1: never heard of this game. Then I watched a video

497
00:28:55,520 --> 00:28:58,760
Speaker 1: of the gameplay and I said, I think I owned

498
00:28:58,760 --> 00:29:02,600
Speaker 1: this game, but I had no memory of the name

499
00:29:02,680 --> 00:29:06,200
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, so it's it's amazed game. Let's let'

500
00:29:06,240 --> 00:29:08,560
Speaker 1: let's talk by the little what happened the little facts

501
00:29:08,600 --> 00:29:12,680
Speaker 1: about this this uh infringing work that this is being called.

502
00:29:12,680 --> 00:29:15,120
Speaker 1: So there's a game developer's name is Ed Everett and

503
00:29:15,240 --> 00:29:17,400
Speaker 1: a Mr. Stop And in the case, they don't actually

504
00:29:17,440 --> 00:29:18,840
Speaker 1: give Stop a first name, so I don't know what

505
00:29:18,880 --> 00:29:20,840
Speaker 1: his name is. His first name please the head of

506
00:29:21,200 --> 00:29:24,160
Speaker 1: Phillips Home video game development, and that's for the Odyssey.

507
00:29:24,400 --> 00:29:27,600
Speaker 1: So they see pac Man in an airport arcade and

508
00:29:27,640 --> 00:29:30,320
Speaker 1: they decide, hey, we could build a better version for

509
00:29:30,440 --> 00:29:34,080
Speaker 1: the Odyssey home console. Now, Everett had made twenty one

510
00:29:34,280 --> 00:29:37,360
Speaker 1: other video games, so he's he's got a good track

511
00:29:37,440 --> 00:29:41,200
Speaker 1: record when it comes to making games. Let's Stop and

512
00:29:41,400 --> 00:29:43,840
Speaker 1: Everett both decide that, hey, listen, if we had the

513
00:29:43,880 --> 00:29:46,400
Speaker 1: pac Man name on this game, it would do so

514
00:29:46,480 --> 00:29:50,080
Speaker 1: much better. So Average starting to do some development on

515
00:29:50,120 --> 00:29:53,040
Speaker 1: the game North American at this point where Phillips is

516
00:29:53,560 --> 00:29:55,680
Speaker 1: trying to get the license from Midway, So, hey, can

517
00:29:55,680 --> 00:29:57,520
Speaker 1: we just make a game with you guys with the

518
00:29:57,600 --> 00:30:03,080
Speaker 1: license and the company Midway says no, we're not giving

519
00:30:03,080 --> 00:30:05,600
Speaker 1: you a license. So Average kind of building a game

520
00:30:05,680 --> 00:30:10,120
Speaker 1: that's not even done yet. He's told that we don't

521
00:30:10,120 --> 00:30:13,080
Speaker 1: have the license. So Avert continues to build this game,

522
00:30:13,560 --> 00:30:15,480
Speaker 1: and it turns out to be Casey Munchkin, right, the

523
00:30:15,520 --> 00:30:18,280
Speaker 1: idea of being to make a game similar to pac

524
00:30:18,320 --> 00:30:22,760
Speaker 1: Man without being exactly pac Man, and also the idea

525
00:30:22,760 --> 00:30:26,400
Speaker 1: of making this quote unquote better than the arcade version.

526
00:30:26,600 --> 00:30:30,920
Speaker 1: So it was it wasn't built as a clone of

527
00:30:31,040 --> 00:30:35,560
Speaker 1: pac Man, but you know it's undeniable that it shares

528
00:30:35,680 --> 00:30:38,960
Speaker 1: a lot of similarities to pac Man. Yeah, so Avert

529
00:30:38,960 --> 00:30:41,760
Speaker 1: finishes this game called Casey Munchkin. North American says, can

530
00:30:41,760 --> 00:30:43,280
Speaker 1: we review the game? We want to make sure it's

531
00:30:43,320 --> 00:30:46,200
Speaker 1: totally different from pac Man, And so they see the game,

532
00:30:46,240 --> 00:30:48,200
Speaker 1: they go, okay, we need to change some things. First,

533
00:30:48,480 --> 00:30:50,880
Speaker 1: change the protagonist's color. He's not going to be yellow,

534
00:30:51,520 --> 00:30:53,640
Speaker 1: so that that's a big flag. So they change the

535
00:30:53,640 --> 00:30:56,720
Speaker 1: color of Munchkin from the yellow to blue. They also

536
00:30:57,120 --> 00:31:01,200
Speaker 1: told retailers, do not call this pac Man, do not

537
00:31:01,320 --> 00:31:04,120
Speaker 1: reference pac Man. Whatever you do, don't call it pac Man.

538
00:31:04,960 --> 00:31:08,560
Speaker 1: So what actually happens in reality retailers call it Odysse's

539
00:31:08,560 --> 00:31:11,480
Speaker 1: pac Man or a pac Man's pac game because that's

540
00:31:11,520 --> 00:31:15,120
Speaker 1: gonna sell copies to customers and that's what the stores

541
00:31:15,120 --> 00:31:18,480
Speaker 1: are concerned with. They don't the stores aren't concerned with copyright.

542
00:31:18,560 --> 00:31:22,560
Speaker 1: They're concerned with moving inventory. Yeah, so that didn't help anything.

543
00:31:22,840 --> 00:31:24,640
Speaker 1: We fill up because they're like, no, don't do that,

544
00:31:24,680 --> 00:31:27,640
Speaker 1: don't do that. And so Atari gets wind of this,

545
00:31:27,720 --> 00:31:30,600
Speaker 1: they go listen, we're we're suing you because you are

546
00:31:30,880 --> 00:31:32,760
Speaker 1: pringing on our copyright. Here. We have the rights to

547
00:31:32,800 --> 00:31:34,120
Speaker 1: do this. You don't have any rights to do this.

548
00:31:34,560 --> 00:31:37,000
Speaker 1: And they look for a primary injunction to get this

549
00:31:37,080 --> 00:31:39,320
Speaker 1: game off the shelves. They don't want this game being sold.

550
00:31:39,840 --> 00:31:44,040
Speaker 1: And in the first case, Atari loses. Okay, ATORI does

551
00:31:44,080 --> 00:31:46,360
Speaker 1: not get their injunction and to start with, and that's

552
00:31:46,360 --> 00:31:48,440
Speaker 1: how it ends up at the Court of Appeal Seventh Circuit,

553
00:31:48,600 --> 00:31:51,480
Speaker 1: because the Court of Appeals is taking this appeal to

554
00:31:51,520 --> 00:31:55,040
Speaker 1: find out what happens, and they decide it is infringement,

555
00:31:56,040 --> 00:31:58,800
Speaker 1: which will make your head explode as we describe the games,

556
00:31:59,200 --> 00:32:03,880
Speaker 1: because it's very strange why this in this case there

557
00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:08,560
Speaker 1: is infringement versus the Before we get into that, just

558
00:32:08,640 --> 00:32:11,520
Speaker 1: so just so people can kind of understand, I don't

559
00:32:11,520 --> 00:32:13,560
Speaker 1: mean to put you on the spot, id, but can

560
00:32:13,640 --> 00:32:17,200
Speaker 1: you can you sort of give an overview of of

561
00:32:17,240 --> 00:32:20,840
Speaker 1: what the appeals process is in case could because, as

562
00:32:20,880 --> 00:32:23,840
Speaker 1: you pointed out, Atari had lost the case, but then

563
00:32:23,920 --> 00:32:26,840
Speaker 1: was able to take it to another court. Well, I mean,

564
00:32:26,880 --> 00:32:30,120
Speaker 1: so that the first case was adjudicated, and is this

565
00:32:30,320 --> 00:32:32,360
Speaker 1: in this particular case, you have to show you're looking

566
00:32:32,360 --> 00:32:34,840
Speaker 1: for an injunction. You have to show irreparable harm. Okay,

567
00:32:35,200 --> 00:32:37,400
Speaker 1: if you're looking for irreparable harm, you have to explain

568
00:32:37,480 --> 00:32:40,520
Speaker 1: that you cannot be made whole with money. Right, so

569
00:32:40,640 --> 00:32:43,600
Speaker 1: if you have, uh, if you're talking about Apple and Samsung,

570
00:32:43,640 --> 00:32:45,840
Speaker 1: they're like, hey, look, don't sell those phones, and the

571
00:32:45,920 --> 00:32:47,920
Speaker 1: courts like no, you know what if if this stays

572
00:32:47,960 --> 00:32:49,800
Speaker 1: on the shelves, they can just pay you money because

573
00:32:49,800 --> 00:32:51,440
Speaker 1: that's only that's the only thing you're gonna lose. You're

574
00:32:51,480 --> 00:32:54,000
Speaker 1: just gonna lose on profits. Well, that's what they'll pay

575
00:32:54,000 --> 00:32:57,440
Speaker 1: out the same thing with this kind of deal. The court,

576
00:32:57,760 --> 00:33:01,480
Speaker 1: the lower court found, look, there was no irreparable harm here,

577
00:33:01,480 --> 00:33:04,640
Speaker 1: so we're not going to stop this game from being sold. Um.

578
00:33:04,720 --> 00:33:07,440
Speaker 1: Then Atari just basically files a motion for of appeal.

579
00:33:07,640 --> 00:33:09,840
Speaker 1: I mean, that's basically what that works. They file the

580
00:33:09,840 --> 00:33:12,160
Speaker 1: appeal and then this court decides to take a look

581
00:33:12,720 --> 00:33:15,640
Speaker 1: at everything that happened in the first case, and pretty

582
00:33:15,720 --> 00:33:19,360
Speaker 1: much I believe in this. In this appeals process, all

583
00:33:19,400 --> 00:33:21,320
Speaker 1: the facts are pretty much stipulated. So it's not a

584
00:33:21,320 --> 00:33:23,040
Speaker 1: heck of a lot of disagreement, not having like an

585
00:33:23,160 --> 00:33:27,240
Speaker 1: argument about um, oh, you know, these two guys didn't

586
00:33:27,240 --> 00:33:31,000
Speaker 1: see the airport. They saw it somewhere in Atari's headquarters.

587
00:33:31,120 --> 00:33:34,120
Speaker 1: Whatever facts are in that first case are kind of

588
00:33:34,160 --> 00:33:37,720
Speaker 1: taken as as that. It's just like, this is reality.

589
00:33:37,800 --> 00:33:40,920
Speaker 1: We we can't can't look outside of this reality. We

590
00:33:41,000 --> 00:33:44,600
Speaker 1: just decided this was correctly. Uh, if this, if the

591
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:47,920
Speaker 1: court decision was correct in this case exactly, and they're

592
00:33:47,920 --> 00:33:51,040
Speaker 1: looking at the court abuse discretion they do anything strange.

593
00:33:51,480 --> 00:33:55,040
Speaker 1: It's a very narrow kind of thing. And so it's

594
00:33:55,120 --> 00:33:57,280
Speaker 1: it's you're not gonna see a lot of if you

595
00:33:57,320 --> 00:33:59,760
Speaker 1: ever wanted to see a court of appeals kind of argument,

596
00:34:00,040 --> 00:34:03,560
Speaker 1: I feel like I really want to. No, it's not

597
00:34:03,560 --> 00:34:07,120
Speaker 1: going to be an exciting defendant plaintiff argument. It's gonna

598
00:34:07,160 --> 00:34:09,360
Speaker 1: be like, well, that's what happened, and that's what happened.

599
00:34:09,760 --> 00:34:14,400
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. That's it pretty well at any rate. The

600
00:34:14,440 --> 00:34:17,319
Speaker 1: other thing to keep in mind is that before we

601
00:34:17,360 --> 00:34:19,840
Speaker 1: talk about how the court described these games, because it

602
00:34:19,920 --> 00:34:23,680
Speaker 1: is pretty awesome. Uh. The the other thing to remember

603
00:34:23,800 --> 00:34:27,320
Speaker 1: is that Casey munch Kid came out on the Odyssey

604
00:34:27,360 --> 00:34:32,160
Speaker 1: before Atari's uh Port, I guess Port is probably being

605
00:34:32,160 --> 00:34:35,799
Speaker 1: way too generous, before Atari's version of pac Man could

606
00:34:35,840 --> 00:34:40,840
Speaker 1: come out for the hundred, So that was also an issue.

607
00:34:41,040 --> 00:34:44,400
Speaker 1: Was that seeing this this other home video game representation

608
00:34:44,520 --> 00:34:46,880
Speaker 1: of a very similar idea come out on a different

609
00:34:46,920 --> 00:34:51,000
Speaker 1: console before Atari could have its version come out on

610
00:34:51,040 --> 00:34:55,320
Speaker 1: the dred that could I'm guessing that also gave Atari

611
00:34:55,440 --> 00:34:58,920
Speaker 1: some some ammunition to say, look, they're even trying to

612
00:35:00,280 --> 00:35:02,240
Speaker 1: to edge us out before we can get our product

613
00:35:02,320 --> 00:35:05,760
Speaker 1: on store shelves. But let's talk about how the court

614
00:35:05,880 --> 00:35:12,000
Speaker 1: described these games. So, uh, these descriptions are written up

615
00:35:12,000 --> 00:35:17,120
Speaker 1: in court documents. You can actually read the full descriptions because, uh,

616
00:35:17,200 --> 00:35:20,840
Speaker 1: they're pretty long, but you pulled out an excerpt that

617
00:35:20,880 --> 00:35:24,640
Speaker 1: I think is pretty awesome for the description of of

618
00:35:24,640 --> 00:35:27,719
Speaker 1: of what pac Man is. So this is directly from

619
00:35:27,760 --> 00:35:30,520
Speaker 1: the court case and they're explaining the copyrighted work in

620
00:35:30,560 --> 00:35:33,239
Speaker 1: this case, pac Man, the copyright version a pac Man

621
00:35:33,320 --> 00:35:36,880
Speaker 1: is an electronic arcade maze chase game. Very basically the

622
00:35:37,000 --> 00:35:40,120
Speaker 1: game board, which appears on a television like screen, consists

623
00:35:40,120 --> 00:35:43,960
Speaker 1: of a fixed maze, a central character parenthesis expressed as

624
00:35:43,960 --> 00:35:49,280
Speaker 1: a gobbler UH or pursuit characters expressed as ghost monsters,

625
00:35:49,880 --> 00:35:53,760
Speaker 1: several hundred evenly spaced pink dots which line the pathways

626
00:35:53,760 --> 00:35:57,920
Speaker 1: of the maze or in large pink dots, power capsules

627
00:35:58,160 --> 00:36:01,040
Speaker 1: approximately located in each of the may His four corners,

628
00:36:01,080 --> 00:36:04,040
Speaker 1: and various colored fruit symbols which appear near the middle

629
00:36:04,040 --> 00:36:07,319
Speaker 1: of the maze during the play of the game. Yeah,

630
00:36:07,360 --> 00:36:10,600
Speaker 1: and it goes on to describe in great detail what

631
00:36:10,760 --> 00:36:13,799
Speaker 1: a pac Man game consists of, even going so far

632
00:36:13,840 --> 00:36:17,680
Speaker 1: as to explain how you accumulate points through uh having

633
00:36:17,680 --> 00:36:22,840
Speaker 1: your gobbler gobble pellets, including the power capsules, having having

634
00:36:22,880 --> 00:36:27,160
Speaker 1: your gobbler gobble, the various fruit symbols, as well as

635
00:36:27,200 --> 00:36:30,960
Speaker 1: having your gobbler gobble the ghosts. Whenever the power capsules

636
00:36:31,000 --> 00:36:35,240
Speaker 1: allow for role reversal and the hunter becomes or hunted

637
00:36:35,280 --> 00:36:37,680
Speaker 1: becomes the hunter, I guess in that case, I really

638
00:36:37,719 --> 00:36:40,320
Speaker 1: I really wish these like I wish these court descriptions

639
00:36:40,320 --> 00:36:42,480
Speaker 1: were like on the back of boxes when you bought

640
00:36:42,480 --> 00:36:45,359
Speaker 1: the game. When this period of vulnerability is about to end,

641
00:36:45,480 --> 00:36:48,920
Speaker 1: The monsters warned the player by flashing alternative alternately blue

642
00:36:48,920 --> 00:36:51,279
Speaker 1: and white, before ma turning to their original colors. To

643
00:36:51,320 --> 00:36:53,560
Speaker 1: be fair, this it sounds a lot like I mean,

644
00:36:53,760 --> 00:36:56,080
Speaker 1: these games when they got them for the home consoles

645
00:36:56,160 --> 00:37:00,359
Speaker 1: came with instruction booklets, and sometimes the descriptions sounded kind

646
00:37:00,400 --> 00:37:04,120
Speaker 1: of like that. So I wrote a little note here

647
00:37:04,160 --> 00:37:07,479
Speaker 1: where because I read the same the same court notes

648
00:37:07,520 --> 00:37:10,120
Speaker 1: as I as did. And I love the fact that

649
00:37:10,200 --> 00:37:15,960
Speaker 1: when they were referencing the Casey Munchkin game, which you know,

650
00:37:16,040 --> 00:37:19,239
Speaker 1: they point out had a lot of the same elements

651
00:37:19,280 --> 00:37:23,279
Speaker 1: as the pac Man game, they said that the ghost monsters,

652
00:37:23,320 --> 00:37:26,360
Speaker 1: the three ghost sponsors and Casey Munchkin, rather than the

653
00:37:26,400 --> 00:37:30,360
Speaker 1: four in pac Man, were quote much spookier in quote

654
00:37:31,160 --> 00:37:33,520
Speaker 1: that's right, because they have like little tentacles or or

655
00:37:33,920 --> 00:37:37,840
Speaker 1: beat or something like that, and they creepily move, and

656
00:37:37,880 --> 00:37:41,280
Speaker 1: they also have antenna, so they're they're they're extra animated.

657
00:37:41,320 --> 00:37:42,759
Speaker 1: I believe that was one of the other things they

658
00:37:42,760 --> 00:37:44,440
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure the game look different, and it

659
00:37:44,480 --> 00:37:48,480
Speaker 1: does look pretty different. There's a cool little corral in

660
00:37:48,480 --> 00:37:52,640
Speaker 1: the middle that changes versus compared to the corral with

661
00:37:52,719 --> 00:37:54,799
Speaker 1: the pac Man. Yeah, yeah, and the pac Man it's

662
00:37:54,880 --> 00:37:56,960
Speaker 1: one box that has the ghosts in, and the ghosts

663
00:37:56,960 --> 00:37:58,880
Speaker 1: all come out at the top of the box. In

664
00:37:59,440 --> 00:38:02,400
Speaker 1: Casey Chikin, all the ghosts are piled on top of

665
00:38:02,440 --> 00:38:06,000
Speaker 1: each other. The box is it's like a three sided box.

666
00:38:06,040 --> 00:38:09,960
Speaker 1: There's a there's one side missing, and it rotates ninety

667
00:38:10,040 --> 00:38:12,920
Speaker 1: degrees every few seconds. So the ghost can only come

668
00:38:12,960 --> 00:38:15,799
Speaker 1: out one direction, depending upon you know, whichever way the

669
00:38:15,840 --> 00:38:18,239
Speaker 1: box is facing at that given moment. That's the only

670
00:38:18,400 --> 00:38:20,560
Speaker 1: way the ghost can come out, which is kind of interesting.

671
00:38:20,760 --> 00:38:24,399
Speaker 1: I guess it could be a strategic benefit depending upon

672
00:38:24,440 --> 00:38:28,759
Speaker 1: where you're munchkin was at that given moment. They also

673
00:38:28,800 --> 00:38:32,080
Speaker 1: said that the Gobbler and Casey Munchkin has a personality,

674
00:38:32,200 --> 00:38:35,960
Speaker 1: and that pact Man didn't, so sick burn. Yeah, that

675
00:38:35,960 --> 00:38:39,160
Speaker 1: that is a pretty interesting Uh what do you call

676
00:38:39,640 --> 00:38:42,960
Speaker 1: expression observation by the court. I'm not exactly sure how

677
00:38:43,080 --> 00:38:46,480
Speaker 1: Casey shows a personality as a somewhat of a diamond

678
00:38:46,520 --> 00:38:50,759
Speaker 1: shaped blue face. Gobbler, well, he he does he if

679
00:38:50,800 --> 00:38:55,680
Speaker 1: he wins, like if you clear out a level, he smiles.

680
00:38:55,920 --> 00:38:59,240
Speaker 1: It turns so that it's facing like the faces facing

681
00:38:59,320 --> 00:39:02,160
Speaker 1: the view were as opposed to being in profile and

682
00:39:02,200 --> 00:39:04,400
Speaker 1: you get a smile. Looks kind of like Kermit the

683
00:39:04,400 --> 00:39:07,279
Speaker 1: Frog smiling. If Kermit also had like little horns or

684
00:39:07,320 --> 00:39:10,560
Speaker 1: antenna on top of his head. And then uh, if

685
00:39:10,920 --> 00:39:15,200
Speaker 1: he got gobbled by a ghost, he frowns before disappearing.

686
00:39:15,719 --> 00:39:19,160
Speaker 1: So there's the fact that he could smile and frowned

687
00:39:19,160 --> 00:39:22,560
Speaker 1: apparently gives him some personality. I think Pacman has got

688
00:39:22,600 --> 00:39:26,160
Speaker 1: a personality just all business. She's like, I got no

689
00:39:26,239 --> 00:39:29,520
Speaker 1: time for smiling, no time for frowning, died. There are

690
00:39:29,600 --> 00:39:32,520
Speaker 1: pellets for chomping, all right, I gotta I gotta end

691
00:39:32,600 --> 00:39:35,200
Speaker 1: up chomping these pellets. There there could be a tricycle

692
00:39:35,239 --> 00:39:37,040
Speaker 1: that shows up at some point that I need to eat.

693
00:39:37,640 --> 00:39:40,919
Speaker 1: Obviously very cautious, you know, fruit keeps disappearing on I mean,

694
00:39:41,080 --> 00:39:43,840
Speaker 1: it might be paranoid. I believe pac Man might be

695
00:39:43,840 --> 00:39:45,600
Speaker 1: a little paranoid. But maybe I'm reading too much. It

696
00:39:45,680 --> 00:39:48,080
Speaker 1: might be you might be projecting on pac Man. Here

697
00:39:48,880 --> 00:39:52,080
Speaker 1: is two. So this is a very it's just fun

698
00:39:52,120 --> 00:39:54,480
Speaker 1: to hear the way they describe these games. They have

699
00:39:54,520 --> 00:39:56,120
Speaker 1: to think of it in the abstract because this is

700
00:39:56,160 --> 00:39:58,799
Speaker 1: partially this is not partially. This is very important to

701
00:39:58,880 --> 00:40:02,840
Speaker 1: determine what parts of this game can be protected by copyright,

702
00:40:02,920 --> 00:40:05,879
Speaker 1: what part isn't. Because again, if there's only one way

703
00:40:05,880 --> 00:40:08,960
Speaker 1: to do something, well it's like the meteor case. And

704
00:40:09,040 --> 00:40:11,319
Speaker 1: if there's more than one way, and I mean like

705
00:40:11,440 --> 00:40:14,040
Speaker 1: in in significant ways it's more than one way to

706
00:40:14,080 --> 00:40:17,719
Speaker 1: do something, well, maybe that's infringement. Yeah. So some of

707
00:40:17,719 --> 00:40:19,120
Speaker 1: the things we need to point out or some of

708
00:40:19,120 --> 00:40:21,399
Speaker 1: the differences between these games, because they sound like they're

709
00:40:21,440 --> 00:40:24,560
Speaker 1: fairly similar, but there were a lot of interesting differences

710
00:40:24,600 --> 00:40:29,240
Speaker 1: between the two. U One was that in in Pact Man,

711
00:40:29,280 --> 00:40:33,560
Speaker 1: you have these hundreds of pellets, presumably depending on depending

712
00:40:33,640 --> 00:40:37,759
Speaker 1: upon how it's depicted. Obviously, the Atari version was a

713
00:40:37,840 --> 00:40:40,200
Speaker 1: lot more limited. The Atari Home game version was a

714
00:40:40,200 --> 00:40:43,680
Speaker 1: lot more limited than the the the Arcade version. But

715
00:40:45,040 --> 00:40:48,640
Speaker 1: Casey Munchkin they had twelve dots per level. The dots

716
00:40:48,680 --> 00:40:51,560
Speaker 1: could actually move through the maze, however, so it gave

717
00:40:51,600 --> 00:40:55,800
Speaker 1: an extra element of challenge. Plus, in the Casey Munchkin maze,

718
00:40:55,840 --> 00:40:58,359
Speaker 1: there was one pathway that would end with a dead end,

719
00:40:58,800 --> 00:41:01,279
Speaker 1: so you had to be careful. If the dot was

720
00:41:01,360 --> 00:41:03,440
Speaker 1: down there and you need to retrieve it, you had

721
00:41:03,480 --> 00:41:05,720
Speaker 1: to make sure you could do so and get out

722
00:41:05,800 --> 00:41:08,239
Speaker 1: before being trapped by a ghost because there's no other

723
00:41:08,280 --> 00:41:15,560
Speaker 1: way out. Um. It also had different different game options

724
00:41:15,680 --> 00:41:19,120
Speaker 1: with Casey Munchkin, including one that would turn the level

725
00:41:19,280 --> 00:41:22,319
Speaker 1: invisible around you whenever you moved, so you had to

726
00:41:22,320 --> 00:41:24,080
Speaker 1: stay still, like if you hit a if you hit

727
00:41:24,120 --> 00:41:25,920
Speaker 1: a wall and you couldn't move any further, you have

728
00:41:26,000 --> 00:41:28,480
Speaker 1: to stop so that it would show up and you

729
00:41:28,480 --> 00:41:30,560
Speaker 1: could see whether you could turn in a different direction

730
00:41:30,640 --> 00:41:32,920
Speaker 1: or if you need to back out or whatever. So

731
00:41:33,000 --> 00:41:37,759
Speaker 1: that was also interesting. They also talked about how the

732
00:41:37,880 --> 00:41:41,399
Speaker 1: pellets would be the power pellets and Casey Munchkin because

733
00:41:41,400 --> 00:41:43,319
Speaker 1: there were power power pellets in that as well. It

734
00:41:43,360 --> 00:41:46,200
Speaker 1: also allowed you to turn the tables on the ghosts

735
00:41:46,280 --> 00:41:49,359
Speaker 1: the three ghosts in Casey Munchkin versus the Foreign pact

736
00:41:49,360 --> 00:41:52,640
Speaker 1: Man and chomp on them for a short amount of time,

737
00:41:53,120 --> 00:41:56,600
Speaker 1: but they were randomly distributed among those twelve pellets as

738
00:41:56,600 --> 00:41:58,799
Speaker 1: opposed to being in the four corners like it was

739
00:41:58,960 --> 00:42:01,799
Speaker 1: with pac Man. Uh So there were a lot of

740
00:42:01,800 --> 00:42:04,440
Speaker 1: differences here, a lot of In fact, I would argue

741
00:42:04,600 --> 00:42:09,080
Speaker 1: there appear to be more significant differences in the basic

742
00:42:09,920 --> 00:42:14,080
Speaker 1: presentation of the game than you saw with asteroids versus meteors.

743
00:42:14,400 --> 00:42:18,200
Speaker 1: If you were standing at an asteroids cabinet and you

744
00:42:18,239 --> 00:42:20,759
Speaker 1: were standing next to a meteor cabinet there next to

745
00:42:20,800 --> 00:42:22,279
Speaker 1: each other, you just standing in front of them, they

746
00:42:22,280 --> 00:42:24,640
Speaker 1: would look really similar. Okay, I'm not even kidding. They

747
00:42:24,680 --> 00:42:27,759
Speaker 1: look extraordinarily similar. Obviously once in color, once in black

748
00:42:27,760 --> 00:42:30,920
Speaker 1: and white. But if you put Casey Munchkin versus pac Man,

749
00:42:31,400 --> 00:42:34,240
Speaker 1: there is a distinct difference. I mean even the actual

750
00:42:34,400 --> 00:42:37,000
Speaker 1: maze when it comes to the styling of the maze.

751
00:42:37,320 --> 00:42:41,640
Speaker 1: Instead of it being this kind of rounded, hollow kind

752
00:42:41,680 --> 00:42:45,880
Speaker 1: of maze, you have these very hard lines their purple

753
00:42:46,200 --> 00:42:48,680
Speaker 1: and you do that moving corral in the middle. That's

754
00:42:48,719 --> 00:42:51,319
Speaker 1: that sounds pretty interesting. And then there is this the

755
00:42:51,320 --> 00:42:53,439
Speaker 1: mention of the dots, like you were saying that move

756
00:42:53,680 --> 00:42:57,080
Speaker 1: in Casey Munchkin Versus Pacman, which are stationary. But there's

757
00:42:57,080 --> 00:42:59,359
Speaker 1: this great line in here. It says, you know, as

758
00:42:59,360 --> 00:43:01,960
Speaker 1: the gobbler ches more dots, the speed of the remaining

759
00:43:02,000 --> 00:43:04,320
Speaker 1: dots progressively increases, and the last dot moves at the

760
00:43:04,360 --> 00:43:06,360
Speaker 1: same speed as the gobbler. And the words of the

761
00:43:06,400 --> 00:43:10,280
Speaker 1: district Court, the last dot cannot be caught by overtaking it.

762
00:43:10,280 --> 00:43:15,560
Speaker 1: It must be munched by strategy. So there's an actual

763
00:43:15,640 --> 00:43:17,640
Speaker 1: That's a great line. It's true though, if you have

764
00:43:17,680 --> 00:43:19,560
Speaker 1: if you have to have the strategy elements, you don't

765
00:43:19,600 --> 00:43:22,160
Speaker 1: have the exact same thing in pac Man. You have

766
00:43:22,239 --> 00:43:24,040
Speaker 1: that double wrap around maze where you can just leave

767
00:43:24,040 --> 00:43:26,040
Speaker 1: for the right, show up on the left. This this

768
00:43:26,520 --> 00:43:29,239
Speaker 1: game is so far it sounds very different. And as

769
00:43:29,239 --> 00:43:33,319
Speaker 1: a student, I'm thinking, well, clearly the casey Munchkin ganned gang,

770
00:43:33,320 --> 00:43:36,600
Speaker 1: it's going to be fine. But nope, No, the court

771
00:43:36,640 --> 00:43:39,160
Speaker 1: finds in favor of Atari, and you might say, well,

772
00:43:39,200 --> 00:43:42,120
Speaker 1: how the heck can that happen? Got a little bit

773
00:43:42,120 --> 00:43:45,200
Speaker 1: more to say about the biggest lawsuits in gaming history,

774
00:43:45,280 --> 00:43:55,520
Speaker 1: but first let's take this quick break. So one of

775
00:43:55,560 --> 00:44:01,240
Speaker 1: the elements that came to um Atari's aid not on purpose,

776
00:44:01,280 --> 00:44:03,880
Speaker 1: I mean, this was just something that that ended up

777
00:44:03,920 --> 00:44:08,120
Speaker 1: supporting Atari's argument was that when you're looking at the

778
00:44:08,160 --> 00:44:13,279
Speaker 1: implementation of a a maze chase game, they actually categorized

779
00:44:13,320 --> 00:44:16,640
Speaker 1: it as a maze chase game. The court was able

780
00:44:16,680 --> 00:44:20,360
Speaker 1: to look at other games that are also within the

781
00:44:20,360 --> 00:44:24,319
Speaker 1: category of maze chase games but are designed in a

782
00:44:24,480 --> 00:44:30,560
Speaker 1: very different, distinct way from pac Man, and so the

783
00:44:30,680 --> 00:44:34,600
Speaker 1: argument could be made there are other ways to depict

784
00:44:35,280 --> 00:44:39,120
Speaker 1: this style of game without relying upon the same basic

785
00:44:39,160 --> 00:44:43,799
Speaker 1: design elements that pac Man used, and that ended up

786
00:44:43,840 --> 00:44:46,719
Speaker 1: being the crux of the argument. Right, I think it

787
00:44:46,760 --> 00:44:48,799
Speaker 1: wasn't one of them. I think it's a rally X

788
00:44:48,920 --> 00:44:51,120
Speaker 1: was the name of the game, one of the ones

789
00:44:51,160 --> 00:44:56,440
Speaker 1: that they referenced. So uh, they actually said that because

790
00:44:56,920 --> 00:45:01,120
Speaker 1: they the Casey Munchkin ended up copying elements of pac

791
00:45:01,160 --> 00:45:04,719
Speaker 1: Man that were integral to what pac Man is. You know,

792
00:45:04,719 --> 00:45:08,279
Speaker 1: it wasn't just uh, a facet of pac Man. That

793
00:45:08,320 --> 00:45:10,759
Speaker 1: didn't really matter. If that had been the case, it

794
00:45:10,840 --> 00:45:14,120
Speaker 1: might have gone a different way. They said that it's

795
00:45:14,239 --> 00:45:17,759
Speaker 1: it's fundamentally copying the what what I guess you could

796
00:45:17,800 --> 00:45:22,760
Speaker 1: argue is the essence of pac Man, and that therefore, uh,

797
00:45:22,800 --> 00:45:26,120
Speaker 1: this ended up being Atari had a case, like a

798
00:45:26,200 --> 00:45:30,160
Speaker 1: legitimate case against the Casey Munchkin game, and they even

799
00:45:30,160 --> 00:45:33,960
Speaker 1: said that here's a quote. It is enough that substantial

800
00:45:34,040 --> 00:45:38,480
Speaker 1: parts were lifted. No plagiarist can excuse the wrong by

801
00:45:38,520 --> 00:45:41,120
Speaker 1: showing how much of his work he did not pirate,

802
00:45:41,160 --> 00:45:44,239
Speaker 1: which actually came from a previous case. They use that

803
00:45:44,320 --> 00:45:48,720
Speaker 1: as a precedent to state that it doesn't matter if

804
00:45:48,880 --> 00:45:53,360
Speaker 1: you have a lot of original work that is surrounding

805
00:45:53,960 --> 00:45:57,439
Speaker 1: a kernel, if that colonel has been stolen from someone else,

806
00:45:57,480 --> 00:46:01,120
Speaker 1: if it's a significant part of someone else's work. And

807
00:46:01,160 --> 00:46:04,200
Speaker 1: this starts to kind of creep into the concept of

808
00:46:04,200 --> 00:46:06,880
Speaker 1: fair use as well, because fair use has elements in

809
00:46:06,920 --> 00:46:11,759
Speaker 1: it where you're not just concerned with how much was copied,

810
00:46:12,200 --> 00:46:15,880
Speaker 1: but what was the nature of the copied material. So,

811
00:46:15,920 --> 00:46:20,520
Speaker 1: in other words, if I As right something, and uh,

812
00:46:20,560 --> 00:46:24,120
Speaker 1: and I end up copying only a small amount of

813
00:46:24,120 --> 00:46:27,800
Speaker 1: what i As has written, it's I've written my own article.

814
00:46:28,360 --> 00:46:30,879
Speaker 1: I'm not citing i As so much as I am

815
00:46:30,920 --> 00:46:34,400
Speaker 1: taking something he's written and incorporating it within my own work.

816
00:46:34,960 --> 00:46:36,960
Speaker 1: It may be that I've only taken a couple of

817
00:46:37,000 --> 00:46:39,920
Speaker 1: sentences from i As, and you might think, well, that

818
00:46:40,000 --> 00:46:42,799
Speaker 1: should be fair use because it's a small amount. It's not,

819
00:46:43,080 --> 00:46:45,960
Speaker 1: especially if i As had published a very long piece

820
00:46:46,280 --> 00:46:49,839
Speaker 1: from which I took those couple of sentences. But if

821
00:46:49,880 --> 00:46:53,080
Speaker 1: those couple of sentences are at the very heart of

822
00:46:53,080 --> 00:46:56,400
Speaker 1: what i As was writing about, if that is instrumental

823
00:46:56,520 --> 00:46:59,319
Speaker 1: in the point he was making, a court might say, well, no,

824
00:46:59,480 --> 00:47:02,320
Speaker 1: this is a case of plagiarism. You're not. It doesn't

825
00:47:02,360 --> 00:47:05,160
Speaker 1: matter that it was two sentences. What matters is the

826
00:47:05,239 --> 00:47:07,560
Speaker 1: nature of what was written, and that was part of

827
00:47:07,600 --> 00:47:10,440
Speaker 1: what played into the court's decision in this case, saying

828
00:47:10,480 --> 00:47:14,160
Speaker 1: that the elements that were taken, while you can argue

829
00:47:14,160 --> 00:47:18,040
Speaker 1: they were augmented or tweaked or changed or enhanced or

830
00:47:18,040 --> 00:47:21,640
Speaker 1: however you want to put it, they are the crucial

831
00:47:21,680 --> 00:47:25,600
Speaker 1: elements of what makes pac Man pac Man. Yeah. So

832
00:47:26,000 --> 00:47:28,000
Speaker 1: one of the other big things about this, like there,

833
00:47:28,719 --> 00:47:31,399
Speaker 1: as you were saying, you get copyright protection on lots

834
00:47:31,400 --> 00:47:33,320
Speaker 1: of different things. And if there's a couple of sentences

835
00:47:33,320 --> 00:47:35,120
Speaker 1: you took for me, and it's it's at the essence

836
00:47:35,200 --> 00:47:37,400
Speaker 1: or it's the real crux of what I've been writing,

837
00:47:37,920 --> 00:47:39,600
Speaker 1: that could be taken as pleasureism. But there's a lot

838
00:47:39,640 --> 00:47:43,480
Speaker 1: of things that aren't taken as infringement that there's a

839
00:47:43,680 --> 00:47:46,760
Speaker 1: illegal term for its. It scenes a fair It's basically

840
00:47:46,800 --> 00:47:50,800
Speaker 1: having events that naturally would follow. So if somebody decides

841
00:47:50,840 --> 00:47:53,080
Speaker 1: to have I don't know, like let's say a three

842
00:47:53,080 --> 00:47:55,520
Speaker 1: part story arc where you have like a guy and

843
00:47:55,560 --> 00:47:57,560
Speaker 1: a girl and they meet and act one and then

844
00:47:57,560 --> 00:47:59,439
Speaker 1: the act two they break up, and an act three

845
00:47:59,440 --> 00:48:05,719
Speaker 1: they get back together. You can't copyright that. That structure, right,

846
00:48:05,760 --> 00:48:08,640
Speaker 1: because that's that's natural. Less seems like how things work.

847
00:48:08,800 --> 00:48:10,640
Speaker 1: And if that actually happened, they would only be like

848
00:48:10,719 --> 00:48:13,160
Speaker 1: one rom com right, that the only one romantic comedy,

849
00:48:13,160 --> 00:48:15,719
Speaker 1: that the only ones ever existed, and it could never happen.

850
00:48:15,760 --> 00:48:17,359
Speaker 1: Tom Hanks would have been out of work in the

851
00:48:17,480 --> 00:48:20,240
Speaker 1: late nineties exactly, or he would be doing the reboot

852
00:48:20,360 --> 00:48:22,879
Speaker 1: every two years and they would re license it. Uh.

853
00:48:22,920 --> 00:48:26,239
Speaker 1: And so the scenes of pac Man, the things that

854
00:48:26,440 --> 00:48:30,120
Speaker 1: would make sense that anybody could copy, is what the

855
00:48:30,120 --> 00:48:32,080
Speaker 1: court was saying here. With certain things the maze and

856
00:48:32,120 --> 00:48:34,799
Speaker 1: scoring table or standard game devices, So anybody can have

857
00:48:34,840 --> 00:48:37,400
Speaker 1: a maze and scoring table, nothing wrong with that. The

858
00:48:37,400 --> 00:48:40,799
Speaker 1: tunnel exits are nothing more than commonly used wrap around

859
00:48:40,840 --> 00:48:44,040
Speaker 1: concept adapted to amaze chase games. That's fine. You want

860
00:48:44,040 --> 00:48:47,680
Speaker 1: to use dots, that's fine. And the real problem here

861
00:48:48,120 --> 00:48:52,040
Speaker 1: was the fans of ful creations pac Man and Ghosts

862
00:48:52,719 --> 00:48:56,480
Speaker 1: that they're this gobbling character that just like wanders around

863
00:48:56,719 --> 00:49:01,080
Speaker 1: popping pills and being chased by ghosts. This starting to

864
00:49:01,080 --> 00:49:05,919
Speaker 1: sound like an episode of Breaking Bad. This particular implementation,

865
00:49:05,960 --> 00:49:09,640
Speaker 1: this expression is pac Man, This is you can do anything.

866
00:49:09,719 --> 00:49:12,040
Speaker 1: Riley X is a car game. Do you have a

867
00:49:12,040 --> 00:49:14,279
Speaker 1: car running around, and it's probably trying to pick up

868
00:49:14,520 --> 00:49:18,240
Speaker 1: some kind of points based item, maybe it's gas canisters

869
00:49:18,320 --> 00:49:20,440
Speaker 1: or whatever. The heck, you would have never play their

870
00:49:20,480 --> 00:49:22,680
Speaker 1: pellets pellets as well. I had that game as well.

871
00:49:22,920 --> 00:49:25,000
Speaker 1: So you've got pellets. But and you're gonna have a

872
00:49:25,000 --> 00:49:27,560
Speaker 1: scoring table on the top left. Nobody's saying you can't

873
00:49:27,560 --> 00:49:29,879
Speaker 1: have a scoring table. My scoring table in the middle

874
00:49:29,880 --> 00:49:31,440
Speaker 1: of the screen where so you can't see it. That'd

875
00:49:31,440 --> 00:49:34,799
Speaker 1: be ridiculous. There's lots of different elements that you can

876
00:49:34,840 --> 00:49:40,440
Speaker 1: do in a similar game. But if you're just a ghost,

877
00:49:40,480 --> 00:49:43,600
Speaker 1: that's not ghost. If you're if you're a gobbler, you

878
00:49:43,760 --> 00:49:46,520
Speaker 1: better look a little different as a gobbler. That's basically

879
00:49:46,520 --> 00:49:48,839
Speaker 1: the point and the monster. The monster is coming after

880
00:49:48,920 --> 00:49:52,160
Speaker 1: you better not be ghost monsters if you If if

881
00:49:52,200 --> 00:49:55,680
Speaker 1: those elements are similar enough to pac Man, then it's

882
00:49:55,840 --> 00:49:58,560
Speaker 1: very hard for you to make a commencing argument that

883
00:49:58,600 --> 00:50:01,160
Speaker 1: you weren't copying pac Man in This could be a

884
00:50:01,160 --> 00:50:03,760
Speaker 1: Frankenstein game, right. You can have Frankenstein's monster running around

885
00:50:03,760 --> 00:50:05,600
Speaker 1: he's trying to get pellets or I don't know, other

886
00:50:05,640 --> 00:50:07,719
Speaker 1: body parts might be a little bit disturbing at that

887
00:50:07,840 --> 00:50:11,080
Speaker 1: level of game being chased by villagers. That would be

888
00:50:11,400 --> 00:50:14,359
Speaker 1: effectively similar. Right, it sounds like a pac Man game

889
00:50:14,400 --> 00:50:16,960
Speaker 1: to me, but the expression is very different. Not granted,

890
00:50:16,960 --> 00:50:20,279
Speaker 1: it would require all kinds of other licenses. Potentially, uh

891
00:50:20,400 --> 00:50:22,040
Speaker 1: if if there was a movie out at the time

892
00:50:22,120 --> 00:50:24,360
Speaker 1: or whatever is going on, and the Court's like, listen,

893
00:50:24,360 --> 00:50:28,080
Speaker 1: this is going to cause Atari a reparable harm. Atari

894
00:50:28,120 --> 00:50:30,200
Speaker 1: doesn't even have the game out, and you have something

895
00:50:30,200 --> 00:50:34,319
Speaker 1: that looks just like, well, it's something that's the very

896
00:50:34,400 --> 00:50:36,399
Speaker 1: very similar to the point where there is infringement. You're

897
00:50:36,440 --> 00:50:40,640
Speaker 1: infringing on Atari's copyright. If they don't have this game stopped,

898
00:50:41,160 --> 00:50:43,800
Speaker 1: they're gonna lose market share. This could be damaging. And

899
00:50:44,080 --> 00:50:46,160
Speaker 1: the court makes mention it's kind of funny to even

900
00:50:46,200 --> 00:50:49,120
Speaker 1: read something like this. They know the Odyssey games cannot

901
00:50:49,120 --> 00:50:53,080
Speaker 1: be played in an Atari, nor vice versa. It's like, well, yeah,

902
00:50:53,120 --> 00:50:55,279
Speaker 1: of course not. But this was a concept that was

903
00:50:55,360 --> 00:50:57,520
Speaker 1: kind of important because if Atari wasn't losing sales of

904
00:50:57,560 --> 00:51:00,200
Speaker 1: its console, that would be very different. Actually might be

905
00:51:00,239 --> 00:51:03,120
Speaker 1: a little different, but in this case that look, you

906
00:51:03,160 --> 00:51:05,399
Speaker 1: can't sell this game right now because you're causing them

907
00:51:05,719 --> 00:51:07,919
Speaker 1: huge harm. And I guess sent back to the lower

908
00:51:07,960 --> 00:51:11,520
Speaker 1: court to follow along with this to issue the injunction. Yeah,

909
00:51:11,560 --> 00:51:14,760
Speaker 1: and in fact, here's another quote from the court finding

910
00:51:14,800 --> 00:51:18,799
Speaker 1: which does not necessarily put gamers in a very good light.

911
00:51:19,160 --> 00:51:23,839
Speaker 1: It's kind of a backhanded comment. Video games, unlike an

912
00:51:23,960 --> 00:51:28,239
Speaker 1: artist's painting or even other audio visual works, appealed to

913
00:51:28,280 --> 00:51:33,160
Speaker 1: an audience that is fairly undiscriminating insofar as their concern

914
00:51:33,280 --> 00:51:37,840
Speaker 1: about more subtle differences in artistic expression. The main attraction

915
00:51:37,880 --> 00:51:40,319
Speaker 1: of a game such as Pac Man lies in the

916
00:51:40,360 --> 00:51:44,439
Speaker 1: stimulation provided by the intensity of the competition. A person

917
00:51:44,480 --> 00:51:47,760
Speaker 1: who is entranced by the play of the game quote

918
00:51:47,880 --> 00:51:51,600
Speaker 1: would be disposed to overlook end quote. Many of the

919
00:51:51,680 --> 00:51:55,960
Speaker 1: minor differences in detail and quote regard their aesthetic appeal

920
00:51:56,080 --> 00:52:00,520
Speaker 1: as the same end quote. That does sound very damning

921
00:52:00,640 --> 00:52:04,040
Speaker 1: to the general video game playing public of two Like

922
00:52:04,080 --> 00:52:06,719
Speaker 1: you guys, don't you guys don't care about the details.

923
00:52:06,800 --> 00:52:09,200
Speaker 1: You just want the feeling you get when you play

924
00:52:09,239 --> 00:52:12,960
Speaker 1: a game like this. Well, I mean, as you were

925
00:52:13,239 --> 00:52:15,120
Speaker 1: reading that back, and I've seen that line a bunch

926
00:52:15,120 --> 00:52:16,719
Speaker 1: of times, it just struck me. Now, you know, the

927
00:52:16,760 --> 00:52:21,439
Speaker 1: whole think about everything that people when when Apple gets

928
00:52:21,520 --> 00:52:24,279
Speaker 1: upset of people, they're like, hey, look, you're copying our

929
00:52:24,360 --> 00:52:26,879
Speaker 1: stuff and they're not going to care that it's not us.

930
00:52:27,000 --> 00:52:29,200
Speaker 1: That's effectively the same argument, isn't it. They're saying, wait

931
00:52:29,200 --> 00:52:31,520
Speaker 1: a minute, wait a minute, they're gonna buy your thing

932
00:52:31,520 --> 00:52:33,200
Speaker 1: because it looks like my thing, and then they don't

933
00:52:33,200 --> 00:52:36,080
Speaker 1: really care that it's actually ours, And effectively it's the

934
00:52:36,080 --> 00:52:38,680
Speaker 1: same argument that the court says there, although it does

935
00:52:38,800 --> 00:52:44,040
Speaker 1: seriously sound patronizing. Yeah, the undiscriminating the one I want

936
00:52:44,080 --> 00:52:46,000
Speaker 1: to say, the unwashed masses who play video games and

937
00:52:46,040 --> 00:52:52,080
Speaker 1: the pizza parlors can't appreciate. You can't appreciate here kids.

938
00:52:52,440 --> 00:52:54,840
Speaker 1: So another another thing that I think is kind of funny.

939
00:52:54,880 --> 00:52:58,920
Speaker 1: It's it's sort of um uh, you know, tragically ironic

940
00:52:59,360 --> 00:53:04,480
Speaker 1: when you get onto it is. Ultimately, Atari's pac Man

941
00:53:04,640 --> 00:53:08,359
Speaker 1: version for the was awful and is often cited as

942
00:53:08,440 --> 00:53:12,680
Speaker 1: one of the many reasons why the company suffered so

943
00:53:12,760 --> 00:53:18,120
Speaker 1: much uh so many setbacks bree and partly why the

944
00:53:18,400 --> 00:53:21,800
Speaker 1: video game crash the home video game crash three happened.

945
00:53:22,480 --> 00:53:25,640
Speaker 1: It was that they had spent a lot of money

946
00:53:25,760 --> 00:53:29,560
Speaker 1: two create this pac Man game. They rushed it so

947
00:53:29,640 --> 00:53:31,680
Speaker 1: that they could get it out in time for the

948
00:53:31,760 --> 00:53:35,480
Speaker 1: Christmas season it came out, and it was a huge

949
00:53:35,640 --> 00:53:38,759
Speaker 1: letdown because it was such a pale comparison to the

950
00:53:38,920 --> 00:53:45,160
Speaker 1: Arcade experience that it was the actual pac Man game

951
00:53:45,320 --> 00:53:51,319
Speaker 1: that Attari made ultimately is what damaged the company's actual, uh,

952
00:53:51,480 --> 00:53:56,280
Speaker 1: you know, reputation. It wasn't that some other game company

953
00:53:56,360 --> 00:54:00,600
Speaker 1: created a game like pac Man and that damaged Attari's reputation.

954
00:54:00,920 --> 00:54:04,719
Speaker 1: It was Atari's own actions that ultimately damaged its reputation.

955
00:54:04,719 --> 00:54:08,040
Speaker 1: Now that is immaterial for this case, has nothing to

956
00:54:08,040 --> 00:54:11,360
Speaker 1: do with this case. It's just an interesting little side note.

957
00:54:11,960 --> 00:54:14,839
Speaker 1: I'm very curious if I have to look this up.

958
00:54:14,880 --> 00:54:17,000
Speaker 1: I should have looked this up before this show. If

959
00:54:17,080 --> 00:54:21,000
Speaker 1: Atari ever tried to reach out to Phillips after they

960
00:54:21,040 --> 00:54:23,279
Speaker 1: saw the progress of the pac Man game where they

961
00:54:23,280 --> 00:54:26,120
Speaker 1: have dashes instead of dots. It's like, clearly average when

962
00:54:26,120 --> 00:54:27,680
Speaker 1: he's making his game for Phillips, he knows how to

963
00:54:27,680 --> 00:54:29,799
Speaker 1: put dots there. So I don't know why pac Man

964
00:54:29,880 --> 00:54:32,680
Speaker 1: didn't have it. This kind of curious why they weren't like, hey, buddy,

965
00:54:33,200 --> 00:54:36,840
Speaker 1: how about we give you a license now ours looks horrible.

966
00:54:36,840 --> 00:54:39,320
Speaker 1: We're really sorry about that whole doing you thing. Yeah,

967
00:54:39,360 --> 00:54:43,440
Speaker 1: maybe we'll have Casey Munchkin, come on over and be

968
00:54:43,560 --> 00:54:48,360
Speaker 1: renamed pac Man for the at and yeah, and also

969
00:54:48,520 --> 00:54:51,920
Speaker 1: here's something else those I'm kind of curious about. So

970
00:54:53,000 --> 00:54:56,920
Speaker 1: we we established in the Asteroids versus Meteor's case, the

971
00:54:56,960 --> 00:55:01,000
Speaker 1: court had decided that the express of the idea was

972
00:55:01,120 --> 00:55:05,799
Speaker 1: limited to the version that was in both games, and

973
00:55:05,840 --> 00:55:10,200
Speaker 1: that therefore the copyright claim did not hold up, or

974
00:55:10,239 --> 00:55:12,960
Speaker 1: at least did not. It wasn't an infringement because the

975
00:55:13,000 --> 00:55:16,560
Speaker 1: expression was limited by what we could do, and that

976
00:55:16,960 --> 00:55:21,040
Speaker 1: in the pac Man versus the Casey Munchkin one, it

977
00:55:21,160 --> 00:55:23,759
Speaker 1: was different in that the expression of the idea could

978
00:55:23,760 --> 00:55:28,000
Speaker 1: have taken different forms, as evidenced by these other Maze

979
00:55:28,080 --> 00:55:33,280
Speaker 1: Chase games, and therefore the claim of copyright infringement was valid.

980
00:55:34,480 --> 00:55:38,440
Speaker 1: What I wonder is that if there had been a game,

981
00:55:38,760 --> 00:55:43,239
Speaker 1: no matter how primitive, that had a similar premise to Asteroids,

982
00:55:43,280 --> 00:55:47,240
Speaker 1: and that you are commanding a spaceship through an asteroid belt,

983
00:55:47,680 --> 00:55:50,680
Speaker 1: and there are also enemy spaceships, and you have to

984
00:55:50,719 --> 00:55:53,880
Speaker 1: avoid both the asteroids and the enemies, but it was

985
00:55:53,920 --> 00:55:57,680
Speaker 1: in a different a different style, like let's say, it

986
00:55:57,800 --> 00:56:01,759
Speaker 1: isn't that first person view where you're inside a cockpit

987
00:56:01,880 --> 00:56:04,680
Speaker 1: and you're seeing the asteroids from the point of view

988
00:56:04,800 --> 00:56:08,480
Speaker 1: of the spaceship, and maybe you have some other elements

989
00:56:08,480 --> 00:56:11,200
Speaker 1: in the game that can alert you if if another

990
00:56:11,760 --> 00:56:16,480
Speaker 1: craft is either approaching you or there's an asteroid that's

991
00:56:16,480 --> 00:56:18,680
Speaker 1: heading towards you, so that you can maneuver the ship

992
00:56:18,719 --> 00:56:20,960
Speaker 1: out of the way and turn and fire on it.

993
00:56:21,320 --> 00:56:23,520
Speaker 1: If that had been the case, then the court would

994
00:56:23,640 --> 00:56:27,480
Speaker 1: be able to say, well, wait this. These two games

995
00:56:27,760 --> 00:56:31,520
Speaker 1: have the same basic premise of navigating a ship through

996
00:56:31,600 --> 00:56:35,600
Speaker 1: asteroids firing an enemy spacecraft, but have two very different

997
00:56:35,680 --> 00:56:39,719
Speaker 1: means of expression. In that case, I would imagine the

998
00:56:39,719 --> 00:56:42,840
Speaker 1: court would have had to have found Meteors guilty of

999
00:56:42,880 --> 00:56:48,840
Speaker 1: copyright infringement. Maybe not. And if Meteors is if okay,

1000
00:56:48,880 --> 00:56:51,080
Speaker 1: there's how many different ways you can you show it?

1001
00:56:51,080 --> 00:56:53,240
Speaker 1: You're saying the first person version. If you go first person,

1002
00:56:53,719 --> 00:56:57,000
Speaker 1: you still have a field of rocks coming at you, Meteors, asteroids,

1003
00:56:57,000 --> 00:56:58,879
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call them, space debreed still coming

1004
00:56:58,880 --> 00:57:01,600
Speaker 1: at you. So you can even see these two games

1005
00:57:01,600 --> 00:57:04,200
Speaker 1: is fictional game we're making up now that one could

1006
00:57:04,200 --> 00:57:07,320
Speaker 1: be sued based on the concept of Hey, you're taking

1007
00:57:07,680 --> 00:57:10,319
Speaker 1: our concept. People are not going to be discriminating you're

1008
00:57:10,360 --> 00:57:14,000
Speaker 1: you're in a field, you're taking on Asteroids. That's Asteroids, man,

1009
00:57:14,040 --> 00:57:17,880
Speaker 1: you're taking our game. So I don't know if the

1010
00:57:17,960 --> 00:57:20,800
Speaker 1: case would have been decided differently because it's also it's

1011
00:57:20,880 --> 00:57:23,480
Speaker 1: so early. I don't think the court might have had

1012
00:57:23,520 --> 00:57:26,560
Speaker 1: the foresight to even think of a first person experience

1013
00:57:27,040 --> 00:57:28,920
Speaker 1: in general. And you're talking about a primitive version if

1014
00:57:28,960 --> 00:57:32,040
Speaker 1: it if it's so primitive that you have like several

1015
00:57:32,120 --> 00:57:35,560
Speaker 1: lines to depict the cockpit, I'm just thinking, like, like,

1016
00:57:35,600 --> 00:57:38,080
Speaker 1: what star Fox, that's a game that basically is that right,

1017
00:57:38,120 --> 00:57:41,040
Speaker 1: it's super If you're like a primitive star Fox, would

1018
00:57:41,080 --> 00:57:43,360
Speaker 1: that have worked. I'm just very curious because when I

1019
00:57:43,360 --> 00:57:45,480
Speaker 1: saw this case way back when, the first thing I

1020
00:57:45,520 --> 00:57:47,440
Speaker 1: thought of was Our Type. I don't know if you

1021
00:57:47,440 --> 00:57:49,280
Speaker 1: played Our Type as a game, I'm like, that's like

1022
00:57:49,320 --> 00:57:53,480
Speaker 1: Asteroids accept its side scroller and they have awesome alien

1023
00:57:53,520 --> 00:57:56,000
Speaker 1: ships and actually it's kind of the same game as

1024
00:57:56,080 --> 00:57:58,840
Speaker 1: After I started thinking about it, well, yeah, I think

1025
00:57:59,080 --> 00:58:02,920
Speaker 1: I mean, if you could successfully make the argument of oh, sure,

1026
00:58:03,000 --> 00:58:06,640
Speaker 1: we have the same idea as Asteroids, but our version

1027
00:58:06,880 --> 00:58:10,040
Speaker 1: is a completely different expression of that idea than I

1028
00:58:10,080 --> 00:58:15,040
Speaker 1: think you could follow into the category that meteors ultimately

1029
00:58:15,080 --> 00:58:18,960
Speaker 1: fell into um that you well, except well, no, in

1030
00:58:18,960 --> 00:58:20,600
Speaker 1: that case, actually you would say that you weren't. You

1031
00:58:20,640 --> 00:58:23,600
Speaker 1: weren't infringing upon copyright at all, because you had you

1032
00:58:23,640 --> 00:58:26,120
Speaker 1: had taken you know, you can't copyright that original idea.

1033
00:58:26,280 --> 00:58:29,040
Speaker 1: So therefore, like your expression of that idea and our

1034
00:58:29,040 --> 00:58:32,800
Speaker 1: expression of this idea are so fundamentally different from one

1035
00:58:32,800 --> 00:58:36,200
Speaker 1: another that there's no copyright infringement, that these are two

1036
00:58:36,320 --> 00:58:40,320
Speaker 1: very different game experiences that call upon the same thing.

1037
00:58:40,320 --> 00:58:44,520
Speaker 1: Because otherwise the maze chase games, whichever one came first,

1038
00:58:44,560 --> 00:58:47,440
Speaker 1: would be able to claim copyright infringement on all the others.

1039
00:58:47,480 --> 00:58:51,720
Speaker 1: It wouldn't matter if the design was a car instead

1040
00:58:51,760 --> 00:58:55,040
Speaker 1: of a gobbler, because you're saying, well, it's the exact

1041
00:58:55,040 --> 00:58:59,720
Speaker 1: same experience. You're you're navigating a piece through a maze

1042
00:59:00,200 --> 00:59:05,400
Speaker 1: being chased down by enemies. I mean, because this is

1043
00:59:05,440 --> 00:59:08,800
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff that drives me nuts about copyright cases,

1044
00:59:08,880 --> 00:59:15,160
Speaker 1: because it almost seems arbitrary. Uh, when you go case

1045
00:59:15,200 --> 00:59:18,360
Speaker 1: by case like this and say, well, the logic that's

1046
00:59:18,400 --> 00:59:20,600
Speaker 1: being applied in this one case seems like it's not

1047
00:59:20,680 --> 00:59:23,200
Speaker 1: being applied in this other case. Now, in the ones

1048
00:59:23,280 --> 00:59:26,320
Speaker 1: we've talked about. I understand the perspectives, and I even

1049
00:59:26,360 --> 00:59:29,080
Speaker 1: agree to a certain extent, especially putting myself in the

1050
00:59:29,160 --> 00:59:33,440
Speaker 1: place of the time right and the limitations of the technology,

1051
00:59:33,480 --> 00:59:35,640
Speaker 1: but it still is one of the things that can

1052
00:59:35,680 --> 00:59:39,440
Speaker 1: be a real head scratcher. And ultimately, law is something

1053
00:59:39,440 --> 00:59:41,880
Speaker 1: that people have made, so therefore it is going to

1054
00:59:41,920 --> 00:59:45,760
Speaker 1: have the same sort of limitations and failings as people. Yeah,

1055
00:59:45,840 --> 00:59:48,280
Speaker 1: these these has to be applied ad hoc. That's the

1056
00:59:48,280 --> 00:59:50,760
Speaker 1: way this is supposed to be in And I joined

1057
00:59:50,800 --> 00:59:53,520
Speaker 1: you in the in the confusion slash rage. When I

1058
00:59:53,560 --> 00:59:55,680
Speaker 1: first saw this, I was just like, I don't understand

1059
00:59:55,680 --> 00:59:58,000
Speaker 1: how this can be. And the fun thing about law

1060
00:59:58,040 --> 01:00:01,400
Speaker 1: is that you have to make both of these things

1061
01:00:01,440 --> 01:00:05,760
Speaker 1: that seemed completely opposite. You have to somehow harmonize them.

1062
01:00:05,760 --> 01:00:08,280
Speaker 1: When you figure out how to harmonize them, that's how

1063
01:00:08,320 --> 01:00:10,120
Speaker 1: you're building your rules when it comes to all of

1064
01:00:10,160 --> 01:00:12,640
Speaker 1: this stuff. So the only way this really works is saying, okay,

1065
01:00:12,680 --> 01:00:17,280
Speaker 1: there's These are two different examples of the idea expression unity.

1066
01:00:17,320 --> 01:00:20,240
Speaker 1: Is there an idea expression unity when it comes to

1067
01:00:20,400 --> 01:00:23,560
Speaker 1: Meteors Yes? Is that the case when it comes to

1068
01:00:23,640 --> 01:00:26,600
Speaker 1: pac Man No? Because this is where the line is

1069
01:00:26,920 --> 01:00:29,960
Speaker 1: even though these games looked very different, I thought from

1070
01:00:30,000 --> 01:00:33,760
Speaker 1: just a They called it an ordinary observer point of view.

1071
01:00:34,120 --> 01:00:35,640
Speaker 1: To me, that just seems like any human being to

1072
01:00:35,640 --> 01:00:37,520
Speaker 1: take a look at it. They don't actually want you

1073
01:00:37,560 --> 01:00:40,360
Speaker 1: to dissect things either, which is kind of an interesting idea.

1074
01:00:40,680 --> 01:00:42,800
Speaker 1: If you just looked at them, you wouldn't think Casey

1075
01:00:42,840 --> 01:00:45,080
Speaker 1: Muchgan is the same MS pac Man, It's just it.

1076
01:00:45,440 --> 01:00:48,680
Speaker 1: You wouldn't be that confused, but you would say asteroids

1077
01:00:48,680 --> 01:00:51,320
Speaker 1: and meteors are the same. But this, this is just

1078
01:00:51,440 --> 01:00:54,880
Speaker 1: the way this stuff turned out over time, because otherwise

1079
01:00:55,680 --> 01:00:59,480
Speaker 1: we would never have things like Mario and Sonic and

1080
01:00:59,560 --> 01:01:02,720
Speaker 1: Bunk Like. They're all side scrollers, right for all this

1081
01:01:03,080 --> 01:01:05,880
Speaker 1: this little cute mascot character. They get powered up. They're

1082
01:01:05,920 --> 01:01:08,920
Speaker 1: collecting something of some sort. Once got rings, once got coins.

1083
01:01:09,840 --> 01:01:11,880
Speaker 1: How are they getting about it? Once breaking it with

1084
01:01:11,960 --> 01:01:14,240
Speaker 1: his hand above his head. Another one is breaking it

1085
01:01:14,320 --> 01:01:16,959
Speaker 1: as he spins into a ball. The fact that they're

1086
01:01:16,960 --> 01:01:20,800
Speaker 1: expressed so differently is actually important, because if we don't

1087
01:01:20,800 --> 01:01:22,200
Speaker 1: have that, we would just have a bunch of clone

1088
01:01:22,240 --> 01:01:24,880
Speaker 1: games where they Okay, here's your plumber. I mean, I

1089
01:01:24,920 --> 01:01:26,640
Speaker 1: guess the question. I would love to see that lawsuit

1090
01:01:26,640 --> 01:01:29,200
Speaker 1: of somebody breaking down Super Mario. It's like, Okay, how

1091
01:01:29,480 --> 01:01:35,760
Speaker 1: how many ways can you express an avenging plumber? Only

1092
01:01:35,800 --> 01:01:39,560
Speaker 1: one good one? It's the only one good one. But yeah,

1093
01:01:39,680 --> 01:01:41,760
Speaker 1: this was a lot of fun to look into. It

1094
01:01:41,840 --> 01:01:45,240
Speaker 1: was definitely outside of my normal zone. So I gotta

1095
01:01:45,320 --> 01:01:47,800
Speaker 1: thank you I as for for joining me, and not

1096
01:01:47,840 --> 01:01:50,400
Speaker 1: just joining me, but for being the one to suggest

1097
01:01:51,080 --> 01:01:54,560
Speaker 1: these two cases in particular as the subject for this episode,

1098
01:01:54,640 --> 01:01:57,880
Speaker 1: because it turned out to be a really fascinating kind

1099
01:01:57,880 --> 01:02:03,520
Speaker 1: of discussion both of the legal status of video games

1100
01:02:03,680 --> 01:02:08,600
Speaker 1: and just the weird mind bending logic you have to

1101
01:02:08,640 --> 01:02:11,680
Speaker 1: apply when it comes to copyright. Well, thanks for having me.

1102
01:02:11,720 --> 01:02:14,000
Speaker 1: And I probably was influenced by listening to the at

1103
01:02:14,080 --> 01:02:15,880
Speaker 1: R three partner because I was like, oh, that's the

1104
01:02:15,920 --> 01:02:18,280
Speaker 1: bizarre all right there, game kind of sucked. Never minded

1105
01:02:18,320 --> 01:02:21,400
Speaker 1: these cases, the two cases that drove me insane. Here

1106
01:02:21,400 --> 01:02:23,880
Speaker 1: they are and they brought it back. These these these

1107
01:02:23,960 --> 01:02:27,280
Speaker 1: horrible ideas. And one of the reasons why I never

1108
01:02:27,280 --> 01:02:30,800
Speaker 1: went into intellectual property law as an aside was because

1109
01:02:30,920 --> 01:02:33,560
Speaker 1: of cases like this. It was some of it does

1110
01:02:33,600 --> 01:02:38,000
Speaker 1: seem arbitrary and it could drive a person crazy. So

1111
01:02:38,040 --> 01:02:41,200
Speaker 1: I decided I don't feel like doing that and ended

1112
01:02:41,240 --> 01:02:44,880
Speaker 1: up on this podcast today and and now here we are.

1113
01:02:45,600 --> 01:02:48,920
Speaker 1: So I as an I plan on doing another episode

1114
01:02:49,000 --> 01:02:52,760
Speaker 1: about a lawsuit in tech, specifically actually a series of

1115
01:02:52,840 --> 01:02:57,680
Speaker 1: lawsuits the the we mentioned it earlier, the Apple Samsung battles,

1116
01:02:58,240 --> 01:03:00,840
Speaker 1: and we were originally going to in flude that in

1117
01:03:01,040 --> 01:03:03,640
Speaker 1: our discussion today, but then it just it was it

1118
01:03:03,680 --> 01:03:06,640
Speaker 1: became obvious very early on that that would have been

1119
01:03:07,200 --> 01:03:11,200
Speaker 1: we would have been either super trunky ing all the

1120
01:03:11,360 --> 01:03:15,840
Speaker 1: discussion and thus not really illustrating anything useful, or it

1121
01:03:15,880 --> 01:03:18,080
Speaker 1: would go on so long that it would have had

1122
01:03:18,080 --> 01:03:20,880
Speaker 1: to have been split up into multiple episodes. Anyway, So

1123
01:03:21,080 --> 01:03:23,640
Speaker 1: I AS is going to come back at a later

1124
01:03:23,760 --> 01:03:26,200
Speaker 1: date that we will have to determine when our schedules

1125
01:03:26,240 --> 01:03:28,440
Speaker 1: will allow us to do this again. Uh, and what

1126
01:03:28,680 --> 01:03:30,840
Speaker 1: we will talk about that we've already started the notes

1127
01:03:30,880 --> 01:03:34,560
Speaker 1: on that, so they the I guess the way of

1128
01:03:34,600 --> 01:03:37,280
Speaker 1: depending on how you look at it. The nice thing

1129
01:03:37,320 --> 01:03:43,600
Speaker 1: about that story is it's still developing from from now.

1130
01:03:44,640 --> 01:03:47,200
Speaker 1: It's an ongoing war that and the funny thing about

1131
01:03:47,200 --> 01:03:49,400
Speaker 1: it is still as an aside is the fact that

1132
01:03:49,480 --> 01:03:53,920
Speaker 1: they are partners in a number of ventures when it

1133
01:03:53,960 --> 01:03:58,000
Speaker 1: comes to components inside of iPhones of Apple devices, etcetera.

1134
01:03:58,240 --> 01:04:01,160
Speaker 1: The fact that Samsung was set their partner in some degrees,

1135
01:04:01,280 --> 01:04:03,760
Speaker 1: and also they're stabbing their partner. It's just a very

1136
01:04:03,800 --> 01:04:06,560
Speaker 1: strange concept of like, hey, I love you, now let

1137
01:04:06,560 --> 01:04:09,600
Speaker 1: me kill you. Are doing yeah, and and they're they're

1138
01:04:10,120 --> 01:04:12,640
Speaker 1: fairly recent developments on that front as well, with Apple

1139
01:04:12,720 --> 01:04:17,880
Speaker 1: looking into potential other uh microchip processors that kind of

1140
01:04:17,880 --> 01:04:22,360
Speaker 1: are are manufacturers rather and and other component manufacturers and

1141
01:04:22,480 --> 01:04:25,040
Speaker 1: kind of getting away from some of the Samsung stuff.

1142
01:04:25,560 --> 01:04:29,000
Speaker 1: So that I'm sure that has no I'm sure it

1143
01:04:29,040 --> 01:04:32,240
Speaker 1: has to do with a lot of different factors, one

1144
01:04:32,240 --> 01:04:35,920
Speaker 1: of them being the massive number of lawsuits between the two.

1145
01:04:36,800 --> 01:04:39,520
Speaker 1: And that's it from that classic episode. As I was saying,

1146
01:04:39,560 --> 01:04:42,000
Speaker 1: I'll have to do a follow up to it, because

1147
01:04:42,360 --> 01:04:46,640
Speaker 1: since there have been some other major lawsuits, A big

1148
01:04:46,640 --> 01:04:49,600
Speaker 1: one that leaps to mind is between Epic and Apple,

1149
01:04:50,120 --> 01:04:55,960
Speaker 1: which is playing out to a pretty dramatic uh series

1150
01:04:56,000 --> 01:04:59,720
Speaker 1: of events since those initial lawsuits. So yes, I will

1151
01:04:59,760 --> 01:05:02,040
Speaker 1: have do a follow up at some point. But if

1152
01:05:02,080 --> 01:05:04,680
Speaker 1: you have suggestions on other topics I should cover in

1153
01:05:04,720 --> 01:05:07,480
Speaker 1: the future, please reach out to me on Twitter the

1154
01:05:07,720 --> 01:05:10,680
Speaker 1: handle that you should use as tech stuff hs W

1155
01:05:11,200 --> 01:05:19,040
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again and re listen. Text

1156
01:05:19,080 --> 01:05:22,520
Speaker 1: Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more podcasts

1157
01:05:22,560 --> 01:05:25,320
Speaker 1: from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,

1158
01:05:25,440 --> 01:05:28,600
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.