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Speaker 1: Get in Touch with Technology was tex Stuff from dot com.

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Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to Tech Stuff. I am your host,

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Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland today over the magic of the Internet. I

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Speaker 1: have joining me Mr I as actar, my buddy, my

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Speaker 1: co host on other shows like Podcast Without Pretense, and

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Speaker 1: of course a big wig over at c net and

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Speaker 1: also somebody who knows a thing or two about the law. Yeah. Well,

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Speaker 1: thanks for having me back. It was fun doing the

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Speaker 1: oppolye tech piece, and now I think because of my

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Speaker 1: my strange past, I was asked to discuss some tech lawsuits. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Originally we were going to look at a list like

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Speaker 1: four or five big lawsuits in tech, but two of

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Speaker 1: the suits that that I has brought up to me

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Speaker 1: before we got started, before we really dove into the topic,

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Speaker 1: are really fascinating. They also tie into another topic that

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Speaker 1: we covered recently on Tech Stuff, that being Atari, when

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Speaker 1: we talked about the rise and fall of Atari in

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Speaker 1: a epic three part series. So these two lawsuits have

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Speaker 1: Atari in common as as one of the the the

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Speaker 1: participants in said suits, and I as I'm so glad

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Speaker 1: you're here to explain not just what happened and what

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Speaker 1: are the particulars of the case, but why it's important

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Speaker 1: because both of these cases took place fairly early on

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Speaker 1: in the era of home video games, and as a result,

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Speaker 1: would end up really shaping the way video games are

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Speaker 1: treated under copyright law. Yeah. So for those people who

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Speaker 1: don't know, I went to law school. I graduated at

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Speaker 1: Past the Barn, New York, States and immediately got a

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Speaker 1: job in technolog g ended up doing that for the

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Speaker 1: rest of my career. Um. And so there's there's there's

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Speaker 1: a long history of why I became a lawyer. You know, parents,

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Speaker 1: first generation American like be be a lawyer or a doctor.

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Speaker 1: So the game a law degree, um. And I took

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Speaker 1: intellectual property in school. And these cases, the ones that

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Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about, were presented to me back to

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Speaker 1: back and it was just maddening to try to figure

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Speaker 1: out the differences why one case went one way and

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Speaker 1: went why one another. And we'll get all into that.

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Speaker 1: But I'm really kicking myself because I used to have

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Speaker 1: my my books, my notebooks. I'm like, I'll never need

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Speaker 1: my briefs anymore. So I chucked them out. And so

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Speaker 1: here we go talking about two cases that I learned

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Speaker 1: a long time ago. So uh, if there are any errors,

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Speaker 1: I apologize. But we have looked over the cases of

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Speaker 1: several times today personally, and I've looked at two or

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Speaker 1: three times today and written up notes again. I printed

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Speaker 1: out one of them the right notes, because that's how

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Speaker 1: I used to do it back in the day. To

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Speaker 1: the point to the point where you have hard copy

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Speaker 1: in front of you, I literally have my penciled out

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Speaker 1: notes all over based on book briefs, which I used

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Speaker 1: to do when I was in school. Wow. So the

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Speaker 1: first of the two cases we're talking about, and as

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Speaker 1: I has pointed out, these have to do with intellectual property,

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Speaker 1: with copyright, which is a tricky subject right. Well, I've

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Speaker 1: talked about several times on tech stuff, and in general,

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Speaker 1: copyright is about making sure someone who creates a work

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Speaker 1: of some sort that's an affixed tangible medium has some

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Speaker 1: sort of protection that that you don't have to worry about,

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Speaker 1: or rather you have some recourse if someone were to

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Speaker 1: try and copy that work you could pursue action against

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Speaker 1: them based upon the copyright. It gives you that that

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Speaker 1: level of protection, and anything that you set down in

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Speaker 1: a fixed tangible medium technically is protected by copyright. Registering

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Speaker 1: a copyright, however, is a great idea because then there's

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Speaker 1: an official record of said copyright if you should ever

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Speaker 1: have cause to, you know, bring that up in court. Um.

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Speaker 1: This is one of those things where it really only

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Speaker 1: plays out as soon as there is is either a

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Speaker 1: lawsuit or the threat of a lawsuit. Otherwise it's kind

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Speaker 1: of a it's it's kind of in the background. And

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Speaker 1: the first case that we wanted to talk about was

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Speaker 1: Atari versus Amusement World, which sounds like the most fun

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Speaker 1: lawsuit ever. It definitely does the cases from way back

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Speaker 1: in and it was the U. S. District Court in Maryland,

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Speaker 1: And uh, it's pretty simple ideas. So we have two

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Speaker 1: different companies. We've gotta tar and they held the copyright

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Speaker 1: for Asteroids. You guys probably heard that game. You've probably

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Speaker 1: seen it, you know, just saying asteroids. I'm sure you

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Speaker 1: guys have a picture in your head. There's a little

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Speaker 1: triangular ship and there and their rocks flying at you

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Speaker 1: and you blow them up right right until you get

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Speaker 1: blown up by either a rock or one of the

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Speaker 1: few little enemy spaceships that would occasionally pop up. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So another company called Amusement World, which again is a

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Speaker 1: great name. It's not as creative as a tari as that.

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Speaker 1: When I listened to the three partner on it's already

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Speaker 1: finding out where the names came from. I'm like, this

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Speaker 1: is pretty awesome to hear. Um. So these guys basically

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Speaker 1: saw the idea and they're like, we we could make

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Speaker 1: our own game. And uh. One of the big things

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Speaker 1: that you're gonna get out of this case is that

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Speaker 1: you can't. You can't have a monopoly on an idea.

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Speaker 1: So they are free to make a game. But it's

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Speaker 1: already saw this game and they're like, wait a second,

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Speaker 1: it's Trangler ship. You're blown up ros. You're totally stealing

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Speaker 1: our stuff and we're seeing you right. And another thing

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Speaker 1: to keep in mind is this is early enough in

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Speaker 1: the in the era of video games that the court

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Speaker 1: had not fully decided that video games were something you

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Speaker 1: could totally copy right. In fact, in the other case

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Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about, there's a note in the court's

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Speaker 1: decision that says these game video games are not something

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Speaker 1: you can fully copy, right, But there are elements of

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Speaker 1: copyright protection that do extend to video games. And it

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Speaker 1: gets into particulars that we're probably not going to cover

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Speaker 1: in this in this podcast, but just to say that

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Speaker 1: this was kind of a Wild West era of both

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Speaker 1: the home video game industry and of law because technology

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Speaker 1: had outpaced what the legal system was ready to cover.

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Speaker 1: And we see that again and again, not just in

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Speaker 1: video games obviously, but in all realms of technology and law.

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Speaker 1: You see that with things like the autonomous cars coming

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Speaker 1: out and people saying, wait a minute, how do we

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Speaker 1: what sort of legislation do we need to put up

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Speaker 1: to deal with this new reality of technology? And it

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Speaker 1: just turns out that, you know, the law is something

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Speaker 1: that has to catch up to our changing world. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And in this case, you know, we had we had

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Speaker 1: an interesting uh case brought forth by Atari saying here

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Speaker 1: are some of the things that we say, are the

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Speaker 1: similarities between our game and this other game called Meteors

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Speaker 1: Asteroids and Meteors. I mean already just with the names.

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Speaker 1: You're like, guys, maybe we should come up with a different,

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Speaker 1: you know, idole. But they court identified a bunch of

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Speaker 1: multiple points of similarity. Now, in cases of trying to

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Speaker 1: determine whether an author has plagiarized another author, for example,

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Speaker 1: often courts will ask for some third party, preferably a

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Speaker 1: a third party that has no interest in the outcome

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Speaker 1: of the case, to identify any points of similarity and

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Speaker 1: then give his or her opinion as to whether or

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Speaker 1: not the points of similarity indicate a case of plagiarism,

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Speaker 1: or if, in fact, it could have just been coincidence, because,

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Speaker 1: as we're all aware, different people can come up with

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Speaker 1: similar ideas that around the same time, and it's not

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Speaker 1: always a case of of plagiarism. So here are some

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Speaker 1: of the points of similarity. Both games involved the player

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Speaker 1: shooting and destroying rocks, and in both games there are

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Speaker 1: actually three different sizes of rocks. Those rocks would appear

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Speaker 1: in waves, with the initial waves being composed of bigger rocks.

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Speaker 1: When you shoot them, they would break into medium sized rocks.

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Speaker 1: Medium sized rocks would break into small rocks. Small rocks

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Speaker 1: would disappear when you shot them, and the speed of

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Speaker 1: the rocks would depend upon their size, so large rocks

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Speaker 1: move more slowly than small ones. So as you're spinning

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Speaker 1: around with your little ship in both asteroids and meteors,

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Speaker 1: as you shoot these rocks, they start getting smaller and

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Speaker 1: they start moving faster, so you know, you develop your

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Speaker 1: strategy around that. Uh. And in both if you got

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Speaker 1: hit by a rock game over right, or at least

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Speaker 1: your your player life for that one ended, you would

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Speaker 1: usually get multiple lives per game. Um. And both games

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Speaker 1: had enemy spaceships and uh. The enemy spaceships came in

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Speaker 1: two different sizes for both games. The bigger ones were

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Speaker 1: worth fewer points than the smaller ones, the idea being

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Speaker 1: that the smaller ones are harder to hit, therefore they're

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Speaker 1: worth more points. Both the players ships and the enemy

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Speaker 1: space ships could shoot projectiles. Impact would be automatic destruction,

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Speaker 1: which would be accompanied by I think they actually said

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Speaker 1: the symbol of an explosion, because I mean, this is

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Speaker 1: this is early days of video games, guys. You remember,

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Speaker 1: like there's not a heck of a a lot you can do, yeah,

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Speaker 1: when it comes to graphically representing anything. So we're talking

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Speaker 1: some pretty primitive looking graphics. So it's this stuff that

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Speaker 1: gets laid out here. In the next case, it actually

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Speaker 1: determines how like we could have so many side scrollers.

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Speaker 1: It's just it's such a bizarre way to go. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And then that's something else that will come up in

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Speaker 1: this discussion is that part of the reason the cases

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Speaker 1: turned out the way they did is again it's so

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Speaker 1: early on in the era of video games that people

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Speaker 1: had not really well, one, the technology had not advanced

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Speaker 1: to the point where you could have very different depictions

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Speaker 1: of uh, you know, different interpretations of the same basic idea.

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Speaker 1: You were limited in that because the technology itself was limited.

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Speaker 1: So it's not like you could, you know, have one

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Speaker 1: that looks like asteroids where you've got this top down

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Speaker 1: view of a little triangle shooting rocks, and the other

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Speaker 1: one you have a photo realistic, you know, space simulator

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Speaker 1: where you're flying through shooting rocks. Uh. So the technology

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Speaker 1: itself was limited, and thus a lot of people figured

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Speaker 1: that the ability to express an idea itself was limited

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Speaker 1: because of that. Um. But there's some other similarities that

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Speaker 1: I thought were kind of like, well, there's no reason

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Speaker 1: that you could argue one game would have to have

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Speaker 1: this particular element versus the other. For example, both games

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Speaker 1: had a two tone beeping noise that increased in tempo

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Speaker 1: as the game progressed, so like, uh, we just get

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Speaker 1: faster and faster. Um. Both games had scores for players

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Speaker 1: that were displayed in the same sections of the screen, so,

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Speaker 1: in other words, like the player one score would be

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Speaker 1: in the upper left corner, and the player to score

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Speaker 1: be the upper right corner. Both games had a thrust

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Speaker 1: button that would let the player's ship move in whatever

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Speaker 1: direction it happened to be facing at the time. Um,

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Speaker 1: have you ever played Asteroids like the arcade version of Asteroids.

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Speaker 1: I've actually played the home version of Asteroids. I don't

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Speaker 1: think I've ever played it in the arcade. Actually, yeah,

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Speaker 1: the arcade version was tough. I mean, this would be

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Speaker 1: the home version because it is a tari I believe

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Speaker 1: it's not the video game version. Maybe it could be

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Speaker 1: the video game version because you did have both divisions.

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Speaker 1: But um, the the buttons on the Asteroids game were

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Speaker 1: what would allow you to turn the ship left, turn

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Speaker 1: the ship right, or use thrust. Um, obviously you would

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Speaker 1: just use a direction on your joystick usually I think

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Speaker 1: pressing up would give you the thrust in the home version. Ah,

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Speaker 1: but in both versions, if you released the thrust, then

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Speaker 1: gradually your ship would come to a halt. Although the

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Speaker 1: court did did actually notice that this happens more quickly

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Speaker 1: in meteors than in Asteroids. Uh. And both games at

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Speaker 1: Tindelsan points you'd get an extra life and each successfully

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Speaker 1: completed wave of rocks initiates a new wave, and each

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Speaker 1: new wave has more rocks in it than the previous wave.

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Speaker 1: So those were the similarities that the court noticed between

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Speaker 1: these two games, and there are a lot of them.

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Speaker 1: I mean, there's the very basic nature of the game

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Speaker 1: seems identical in these cases, right, I mean, it would

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Speaker 1: be hard for me to argue otherwise I would think, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, if if it's kind of like modern games,

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Speaker 1: you think of like Call of Duty versus any other

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Speaker 1: battlefield game, you think of any any kind of war game,

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Speaker 1: they all kind of the same. But why is that

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Speaker 1: even allowed? Um, there are differences in these two games

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Speaker 1: Meteors and Asteroids. So Asteroids had this, uh at a

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Speaker 1: black field underneath the actual game, but in Meteors you

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Speaker 1: had this star field and the look of distant stars.

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Speaker 1: And this is kind of really pushing it because when

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Speaker 1: you're looking at them, if you have seen the photos

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Speaker 1: of this this game, you'll see they're just basically dots.

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Speaker 1: That's kind of neat. Asteroids is black and white, and

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Speaker 1: Meteors was in color, and that was pretty different. Meteors

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Speaker 1: also had some shading on the spaceship and the rocks

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Speaker 1: so kind of had more dimension because the Asteroids is

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Speaker 1: pretty black looking when it comes to ships and rocks,

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Speaker 1: almost like a schematic drawing, like it's it's it's or

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Speaker 1: almost abstract in a way because the rocks all look

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Speaker 1: the same and they all just kind of float at you,

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Speaker 1: and then you shoot them and now they're they're different sized,

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Speaker 1: but the shapes are still very much the same and

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Speaker 1: they're still floating at you. It's not you know, there's

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Speaker 1: no real sense of, uh, the dimensionality in the original

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Speaker 1: Asteroids game. I really like the element that Meteors starts off.

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Speaker 1: When you start off the game, there's an animation of

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Speaker 1: you blasting off of Earth. Compare that to Asteroids. You

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Speaker 1: just start and you're just in the in the field.

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Speaker 1: Time to go, um, you've got the game. Meteors is

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Speaker 1: actually faster in general, and it moved, and you have

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Speaker 1: a different way of shooting as well. You could can

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Speaker 1: you could shoot a lot more, I think continuously compared

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Speaker 1: to Asteroids. Right, Asteroids was like a burst fire thing.

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Speaker 1: You could fire a few shots, but then you had

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Speaker 1: to wait. It's almost like a recharge period. Have been

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Speaker 1: missing anything else, So that's the main one that's the

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Speaker 1: main ones. I mean, uh, you know, there were There

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Speaker 1: was also the fact that the meteors and meteor and

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Speaker 1: meteors rather could tumble like they actually they actually seemed

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Speaker 1: to rotate as they were coming towards you, whereas the

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Speaker 1: if you watch the old Asteroids game, those shapes just

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Speaker 1: they maintain their same orientation as they move across. So

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Speaker 1: there was that too. So there were some definite improvements

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Speaker 1: on the game. So Amusement World had to defend itself

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Speaker 1: against these claims of copyright infringement. They tried a couple

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Speaker 1: of different tactics. The first thing they tried was, uh,

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Speaker 1: they said that Atari's copyright on Asteroids was invalid in

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Speaker 1: this case because of the way they registered their copyright.

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Speaker 1: So they said that Atari had registered Asteroids copyright as

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Speaker 1: an audio visual work, not as a literary work, and

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Speaker 1: that as a result, the copyright wasn't valid. They said

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Speaker 1: that Atari had submitted essentially a film a video of

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Speaker 1: one out of a possible infinite variations of a single game.

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Speaker 1: So in other words, they captured gameplay footage of Asteroids,

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Speaker 1: and that particular gameplay footage was being sent as as

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Speaker 1: part of the the work that Atari was submitting to

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Speaker 1: get this copyright, and I guess Amusement World was essentially saying, well, technically,

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Speaker 1: wouldn't that just give copyright to that specific film? Like

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Speaker 1: that was that's such a great argument. It's taking You

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Speaker 1: were saying, this is the wild West, it's the early

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Speaker 1: days of video games, and how are they protected to

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Speaker 1: the idea that that Amusement World is pushing us. Wait

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Speaker 1: a second, that's a tape or recording. You definitely have

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Speaker 1: protection for that, but you're suing us about the game itself.

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Speaker 1: And the court was like, wait, wall, wait a second. Okay,

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Speaker 1: now they did h put the work in a tangible medium,

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Speaker 1: and that happens to be the circuitry, and it's not

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Speaker 1: so easy to descend us an arcade cabinet. This is

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Speaker 1: the way it used to be. Yeah, yeah, because the

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Speaker 1: wrong chip. I mean, the game is hard coded on

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Speaker 1: a a a circuit board, and that circuit board is

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Speaker 1: only useful if you haven't connected up to the rest

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Speaker 1: of the system. So you I mean, you would have

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Speaker 1: to have had a Torris and a full console like

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Speaker 1: I mean, a full like Atari cabinet out to the

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Speaker 1: patent office that or rather the copyright office and deliver

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Speaker 1: that and say like, here's our fixed tangible medium. And hilariously,

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Speaker 1: I know a lot of people think the law is

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Speaker 1: kind of messed up and it allows for absurd results.

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Speaker 1: If this kind of actual event that's happening right now

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Speaker 1: we're talking about, if they if Atari had to send

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Speaker 1: an actual cabinet every single time it made a game,

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Speaker 1: that would cause such a ludicrous amount of storage requirements

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Speaker 1: by the government would make no sense. It would can

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Speaker 1: you imagine filing these arcades? Well, it would have made

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Speaker 1: the copyright office a much more fun place to work.

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Speaker 1: It would be a great fantastic break area where you like,

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Speaker 1: we guess, guess what we got? This other game hasn't

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Speaker 1: even come out in our gades yet. Um, you know,

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Speaker 1: it seems to me this this is the argument I

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Speaker 1: would make with this, Like if you were trying to

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Speaker 1: to say, like, well, what is this similar to Let's

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Speaker 1: say that I write a play and, for some reason

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Speaker 1: that I cannot even come up with right now, I

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Speaker 1: submit my play to the copyright office, not by sending

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Speaker 1: in a script to to be copied, you know, to

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Speaker 1: register the copyright, but rather I put on a performance

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Speaker 1: of the play and then I record the performance on

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Speaker 1: using a video camera or whatever, and I send that

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Speaker 1: in to be copyright. That you could argue like, well,

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Speaker 1: you're copyrighting the performance of this play, but the play

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Speaker 1: itself you still haven't registered. That's kind of the argument

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Speaker 1: Amusement World was making. And ultimately the court dismissed this

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Speaker 1: argument and said, all right, you know, for for practicality sake,

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Speaker 1: just for the same reasons that I as was mentioning earlier,

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Speaker 1: we have to draw the line somewhere and a video

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Speaker 1: depicting gameplay footage is going to be differentiated from a

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Speaker 1: film in that we're not saying that this one video

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Speaker 1: representation of the game is the only thing that is

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Speaker 1: protected under copyright because it's ludicrous. But but it could

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Speaker 1: have gone the other way. That could have been a

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Speaker 1: first case where they're saying, actually, you're right, they didn't

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Speaker 1: send necessarcuit board. Um, well, no, you're right, there's no

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Speaker 1: copyright protection and definite your copyright covers a heck of

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Speaker 1: a lot of things, include including derivative works. So if

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Speaker 1: John Fannits send in that recording, if I transcribed it,

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Speaker 1: and go ha, I can sell this because you didn't

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Speaker 1: copyright the actual script. Clearly it's derivative of what you've done.

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Speaker 1: So that's it's supposed to reward the content creator. It's

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Speaker 1: supposed to be about furthering uh society because you when

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Speaker 1: you write something, you're protected and you can actually enjoy

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Speaker 1: the fruits of your labor. And that's the whole point

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Speaker 1: of copyright in a nutshell. Yeah, and it and it

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Speaker 1: does get complicated. I mean, using that other example of

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Speaker 1: the play and shooting a video, Let's say that I

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Speaker 1: haven't sent in the script for copyright yet. I as

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Speaker 1: comes to a rehearsal of this play that has not

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Speaker 1: yet been copyrighted. He video tapes the rehearsal and copyrights

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Speaker 1: the videotape, and now suddenly he's got a registered copyright,

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Speaker 1: assuming that it's granted, he has just a copyright for

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Speaker 1: this thing. I haven't copyrighted my script, and his registration

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Speaker 1: would predate anything I would send in, which would cause

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Speaker 1: further complications. So you know, the whole point of this

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Speaker 1: is to try and create as clear a record of

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Speaker 1: ownership as possible. But if you don't do your part

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Speaker 1: in that, then you can't expect to have the protection

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Speaker 1: that it would grant you. So uh in this case,

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Speaker 1: I guess it was a good thing that the court said, hey, uh,

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Speaker 1: the the audio visual thing is not um, not a barrier.

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Speaker 1: It's not something that is going to count against Atari

359
00:20:39,200 --> 00:20:42,879
Speaker 1: in this case. But Amusement World then had to change

360
00:20:42,880 --> 00:20:46,800
Speaker 1: its tactics and said that, Uh. What Attari was trying

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Speaker 1: to do was claim copyright protection of the idea of

362
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Speaker 1: a video game in which the player tries to survive

363
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Speaker 1: encounters with asteroids and enemy spaceships. So this is where

364
00:21:00,000 --> 00:21:05,240
Speaker 1: to get into another interesting uh facet of copyright, because,

365
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Speaker 1: as it turns out, an idea by itself is not

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Speaker 1: something that's guaranteed protection. There's the whole thing about idea

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Speaker 1: versus the expression of an idea. And you're gonna get

368
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Speaker 1: familiar with this jeweled be pendant and what this this

369
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Speaker 1: thing is. If there was this lawsuit, I'll do it

370
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Speaker 1: real quick. There was one manufacturer of a thing of

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Speaker 1: it like a brooch or a pin that a person

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Speaker 1: would wear. It was a B that had jewels on it.

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Speaker 1: So somebody saw that idea, Hey, that's a really cool idea.

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna make the same thing. So the first person

375
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Speaker 1: who made the be jeweled B said no, I'm suing

376
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Speaker 1: you for for copyright. That's mine, and the court said, listen,

377
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Speaker 1: there's only one way to show a jeweled B. That's it. Now.

378
00:21:53,760 --> 00:21:56,399
Speaker 1: Granted we could have a different pattern on the actual B,

379
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Speaker 1: but a B, if you're trying to keep it realistic,

380
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Speaker 1: is going to have the black and yellow or brown

381
00:22:01,800 --> 00:22:04,280
Speaker 1: and yellow kind of stripes. It's gonna have wings. There

382
00:22:04,280 --> 00:22:07,440
Speaker 1: are elements you cannot change about this, and there's only

383
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Speaker 1: one true way to do this. In that case, you do.

384
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Speaker 1: The first person does have a copyright on that actual item,

385
00:22:14,359 --> 00:22:17,440
Speaker 1: but it's not exactly terribly strong. Another person can actually

386
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Speaker 1: make the same thing also have a copyright on it,

387
00:22:19,960 --> 00:22:22,160
Speaker 1: which sounds a little bit bizarre if you think about it.

388
00:22:22,520 --> 00:22:27,600
Speaker 1: But because you can't copyright the idea, this is free

389
00:22:27,600 --> 00:22:29,879
Speaker 1: to copy, and you know you still have a copyright.

390
00:22:29,880 --> 00:22:33,160
Speaker 1: It's just such a weak, weak copyright that it's it's

391
00:22:33,359 --> 00:22:35,879
Speaker 1: very very strange. And that's basically we gets applied to

392
00:22:35,920 --> 00:22:39,760
Speaker 1: this case. Yeah, yeah, this this idea that okay, so

393
00:22:39,800 --> 00:22:43,840
Speaker 1: the idea itself is not copyrightable. That there you could

394
00:22:43,840 --> 00:22:47,359
Speaker 1: have the reasonable expectation that different people would want to

395
00:22:47,359 --> 00:22:51,760
Speaker 1: create a game based on this same kernel of an idea.

396
00:22:52,160 --> 00:22:55,800
Speaker 1: The argument then becomes, well, how many different ways are

397
00:22:55,920 --> 00:22:59,200
Speaker 1: there to express that idea? If it turns out there's

398
00:22:59,240 --> 00:23:02,080
Speaker 1: really only one method of doing it, you can't truly

399
00:23:02,200 --> 00:23:07,360
Speaker 1: have protection of that because it would be silly, right

400
00:23:07,400 --> 00:23:09,840
Speaker 1: if it's it's only if there are multiple ways to

401
00:23:09,920 --> 00:23:14,040
Speaker 1: express that idea that you you could argue, well, this

402
00:23:14,119 --> 00:23:17,200
Speaker 1: person copied you, and they didn't have to. They could

403
00:23:17,200 --> 00:23:20,320
Speaker 1: have expressed that same idea in a totally different and

404
00:23:20,440 --> 00:23:26,639
Speaker 1: novel way, So therefore they are they are actively violating

405
00:23:26,640 --> 00:23:31,760
Speaker 1: your copyright. You have a legitimate, uh legitimate complaint. So

406
00:23:31,840 --> 00:23:34,439
Speaker 1: what the court had to decide in this case was,

407
00:23:35,960 --> 00:23:40,280
Speaker 1: did what the stuff that Amusement World did by creating Meteors,

408
00:23:40,520 --> 00:23:45,760
Speaker 1: did they in fact copy Atari or did they simply

409
00:23:46,640 --> 00:23:51,320
Speaker 1: employ the same ideas Because there was really only that

410
00:23:51,400 --> 00:23:56,159
Speaker 1: way to express a game where you are trying to

411
00:23:56,760 --> 00:24:00,880
Speaker 1: maneuver a spacecraft through an asteroid bell while you're being

412
00:24:00,880 --> 00:24:04,920
Speaker 1: shot at by enemy spaceships. And that must have been

413
00:24:04,920 --> 00:24:09,280
Speaker 1: a really interesting deliberation to go through and say, all right, well,

414
00:24:09,320 --> 00:24:13,320
Speaker 1: which one elements here do we think are essentially universal

415
00:24:13,359 --> 00:24:15,159
Speaker 1: in the sense that anyone who wanted to make a

416
00:24:15,200 --> 00:24:19,000
Speaker 1: game that represented this kind of idea would have to

417
00:24:19,040 --> 00:24:22,920
Speaker 1: do it this way versus which one of these ideas

418
00:24:23,400 --> 00:24:26,199
Speaker 1: could you do in a myriad of other ways, But

419
00:24:26,320 --> 00:24:30,399
Speaker 1: they chose to copy Atari's method, and in this case

420
00:24:31,280 --> 00:24:36,959
Speaker 1: it ended up um kind of a favoring Amusement World.

421
00:24:37,160 --> 00:24:41,639
Speaker 1: Amusement World UH is not found guilty of copy infringement

422
00:24:41,680 --> 00:24:46,280
Speaker 1: in this case because there is apparently the idea expression

423
00:24:46,840 --> 00:24:49,199
Speaker 1: unity is true in this particular case. That's what the

424
00:24:49,200 --> 00:24:51,560
Speaker 1: court's saying. They're saying, look, there is like one way

425
00:24:51,600 --> 00:24:53,560
Speaker 1: to do this. So if you had a spaceship and

426
00:24:53,640 --> 00:24:56,760
Speaker 1: you're going to blow up a rock in this in space,

427
00:24:57,800 --> 00:25:00,359
Speaker 1: those rocks have to disappear one of two or three

428
00:25:00,359 --> 00:25:02,399
Speaker 1: different ways. Okay, it's gonna break up and one piece,

429
00:25:02,400 --> 00:25:05,360
Speaker 1: two pieces, three pieces that breaks up into a million pieces.

430
00:25:05,600 --> 00:25:08,920
Speaker 1: The game becomes somewhat unplayable because you'll just lose all

431
00:25:08,960 --> 00:25:11,840
Speaker 1: the time. They're saying that both games start off somewhat easy,

432
00:25:11,920 --> 00:25:14,760
Speaker 1: which is to encourage people to play the game. That's

433
00:25:14,760 --> 00:25:16,680
Speaker 1: something that you can't really say, We'll start the game

434
00:25:16,720 --> 00:25:19,840
Speaker 1: really hard and that will be a different game. So

435
00:25:20,040 --> 00:25:23,960
Speaker 1: there's enough elements that in this case the course saying,

436
00:25:24,000 --> 00:25:27,160
Speaker 1: look if you're flying around in space and that you're

437
00:25:27,160 --> 00:25:30,359
Speaker 1: blown up rocks. This is kind of the only way

438
00:25:30,400 --> 00:25:34,200
Speaker 1: to do it, because you just there's no way around this.

439
00:25:35,040 --> 00:25:39,520
Speaker 1: And I want to just quickly mentioned that both of

440
00:25:39,560 --> 00:25:42,879
Speaker 1: these guys Amusement World in Natari both have copyright protection.

441
00:25:43,320 --> 00:25:46,720
Speaker 1: It's that the protection doesn't give them a monopoly because

442
00:25:47,400 --> 00:25:50,399
Speaker 1: of the idea expression unity. That's what the thing is.

443
00:25:50,440 --> 00:25:53,679
Speaker 1: It's about a monopoly on something more so than it

444
00:25:53,760 --> 00:25:56,520
Speaker 1: is protection, because even though these games are very similar

445
00:25:57,119 --> 00:26:00,440
Speaker 1: and they act in a very similar way, they both

446
00:26:00,760 --> 00:26:05,720
Speaker 1: still have copyrights on those products, which is really I mean,

447
00:26:05,720 --> 00:26:09,280
Speaker 1: this is that's mind bending to me, particularly when we

448
00:26:09,320 --> 00:26:12,639
Speaker 1: get to the discussion of the second case, where we

449
00:26:12,680 --> 00:26:16,560
Speaker 1: start saying, wait a minute, I don't on a very

450
00:26:16,600 --> 00:26:20,080
Speaker 1: like high level, it could be hard to distinguish between

451
00:26:20,119 --> 00:26:23,560
Speaker 1: the two the differences that that mark one case versus

452
00:26:23,600 --> 00:26:27,760
Speaker 1: the other, because, as it turns out, the court decisions

453
00:26:27,840 --> 00:26:31,120
Speaker 1: in the second case we're going to talk about go

454
00:26:31,280 --> 00:26:33,359
Speaker 1: in a in a different direction than the one we

455
00:26:33,480 --> 00:26:36,720
Speaker 1: just mentioned. And that's that's probably why I mean, I mean,

456
00:26:36,720 --> 00:26:39,720
Speaker 1: I imagine that's why you when you were studying law,

457
00:26:39,840 --> 00:26:43,560
Speaker 1: you had these two cases kind of presented together as

458
00:26:43,600 --> 00:26:49,439
Speaker 1: a way of uh illustrating this this idea of um

459
00:26:49,480 --> 00:26:52,159
Speaker 1: the copyright of the expression of an idea versus the

460
00:26:52,200 --> 00:26:54,960
Speaker 1: idea itself. Yeah, like I said in the beginning, this

461
00:26:55,040 --> 00:26:57,640
Speaker 1: was maddening to go back to back with the case

462
00:26:58,160 --> 00:27:00,800
Speaker 1: that The next case this is ninety eight two. It's

463
00:27:00,920 --> 00:27:03,359
Speaker 1: decided by the United States Court of Appeal, Seventh Circuit

464
00:27:03,880 --> 00:27:07,280
Speaker 1: and the Satari versus North American Phillips Consumer Electronance Corps.

465
00:27:07,680 --> 00:27:11,000
Speaker 1: You might know them as Phillips in the in the case,

466
00:27:11,080 --> 00:27:13,600
Speaker 1: they are constantly called North American because that's just the

467
00:27:13,600 --> 00:27:16,760
Speaker 1: shorthand eight two. That's just the way it was. And

468
00:27:16,800 --> 00:27:18,960
Speaker 1: on top of that, Phillips happened to be the maker

469
00:27:19,000 --> 00:27:21,680
Speaker 1: or something called The Odyssey, which I'm sure not only

470
00:27:21,720 --> 00:27:24,120
Speaker 1: have I heard it discussed on tech stuff. I kind

471
00:27:24,119 --> 00:27:26,919
Speaker 1: of remember the Odyssey because I remember the actual ads

472
00:27:26,920 --> 00:27:29,120
Speaker 1: in magazines and I'm like, what's an Odyssey? So here's

473
00:27:29,119 --> 00:27:32,160
Speaker 1: the thing. I think I actually owned the game that's

474
00:27:32,200 --> 00:27:36,280
Speaker 1: in question. Here, the game of question. Here's uh, there's

475
00:27:36,320 --> 00:27:40,160
Speaker 1: there's two games and Sari has got the Atari has

476
00:27:40,200 --> 00:27:44,480
Speaker 1: in this particular world, Attari has a Midway have the

477
00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:47,679
Speaker 1: rights to make a pac Man game. Who owns the

478
00:27:47,680 --> 00:27:51,960
Speaker 1: copyright on Pacman at the point, so Namco had the

479
00:27:52,040 --> 00:27:56,080
Speaker 1: Namco owns the game, but uh midway in, Atari had

480
00:27:56,080 --> 00:28:00,520
Speaker 1: the United States the the exclusive United States rights to

481
00:28:01,800 --> 00:28:06,399
Speaker 1: pac Man. So you could think of Atari almost being

482
00:28:06,560 --> 00:28:10,080
Speaker 1: a a you know, like the representation of Namco in

483
00:28:10,119 --> 00:28:14,040
Speaker 1: the US because of the way that games would be

484
00:28:14,040 --> 00:28:19,199
Speaker 1: published and then distributed globally. So while Namco technically is

485
00:28:19,280 --> 00:28:22,400
Speaker 1: the owner of pac Man, Atari could act in that

486
00:28:22,480 --> 00:28:26,120
Speaker 1: capacity within the United States. Yeah, that's like the whole

487
00:28:26,160 --> 00:28:28,440
Speaker 1: point of copyright. You have the right. Namco has the right,

488
00:28:28,440 --> 00:28:32,040
Speaker 1: and they own this this character, they own every derivative work,

489
00:28:32,080 --> 00:28:33,840
Speaker 1: and they're like, hey, listen, now that we have this,

490
00:28:34,040 --> 00:28:36,240
Speaker 1: we can sell the license to somebody else to do

491
00:28:36,320 --> 00:28:38,000
Speaker 1: something with it. So that's one of the reason why

492
00:28:38,040 --> 00:28:40,920
Speaker 1: people are ferociously fighting about this, because they want to

493
00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:44,040
Speaker 1: have the exclusive right. Atari paid money for these rights

494
00:28:44,720 --> 00:28:47,840
Speaker 1: and they don't they don't want to lose market share

495
00:28:47,880 --> 00:28:51,560
Speaker 1: because Philips decides to make a better pac Man game.

496
00:28:52,080 --> 00:28:55,040
Speaker 1: Um so this this game that eventually comes out as

497
00:28:55,040 --> 00:28:59,080
Speaker 1: called Ksey Munchkin, a game I had never heard of before.

498
00:29:00,080 --> 00:29:02,600
Speaker 1: I had not I thought, I swore when I saw

499
00:29:02,640 --> 00:29:06,040
Speaker 1: that you had put this as one of the lawsuits

500
00:29:06,080 --> 00:29:08,120
Speaker 1: we were going to talk about. This was before we

501
00:29:08,160 --> 00:29:11,040
Speaker 1: had decided just to focus on a Torii. I saw

502
00:29:11,080 --> 00:29:14,840
Speaker 1: the name Casey Munchkin, and I thought, I've never heard

503
00:29:14,840 --> 00:29:17,760
Speaker 1: of this game. Then I watched a video of the

504
00:29:17,800 --> 00:29:21,360
Speaker 1: gameplay and I said, I think I owned this game,

505
00:29:22,720 --> 00:29:26,400
Speaker 1: but I had no memory of the name of it. Yeah,

506
00:29:26,640 --> 00:29:28,800
Speaker 1: so it's it's amazed game. Let's le's let's talk about

507
00:29:28,800 --> 00:29:31,600
Speaker 1: the little what happened, the little facts about this this

508
00:29:31,840 --> 00:29:34,760
Speaker 1: uh infringing work sure that this is being called. So

509
00:29:34,800 --> 00:29:37,720
Speaker 1: there's a game developer's name is Ed Everett and a Mr.

510
00:29:37,800 --> 00:29:39,920
Speaker 1: Stop And in the case, they don't actually give stop

511
00:29:39,920 --> 00:29:41,200
Speaker 1: at first name, so I don't know what his name

512
00:29:41,280 --> 00:29:43,800
Speaker 1: is his first name, but he's the head of Phillips's

513
00:29:43,920 --> 00:29:46,520
Speaker 1: home video game development and that's for the Odyssey. So

514
00:29:46,600 --> 00:29:49,640
Speaker 1: they see pac Man in an our airport arcade and

515
00:29:49,680 --> 00:29:52,360
Speaker 1: they decided, hey, we could build a better version for

516
00:29:52,480 --> 00:29:56,080
Speaker 1: the Odyssey home console. Now Everett had made twenty one

517
00:29:56,280 --> 00:29:59,400
Speaker 1: other video games, so he's he's got a good track

518
00:29:59,480 --> 00:30:03,840
Speaker 1: record in comes to making games. Let's Stop and Everett

519
00:30:03,880 --> 00:30:06,120
Speaker 1: both decide that, hey, listen, if we had the pac

520
00:30:06,160 --> 00:30:08,960
Speaker 1: Man name on this game, it would do so much better.

521
00:30:09,520 --> 00:30:12,520
Speaker 1: So Average starting to do some development on the game.

522
00:30:12,880 --> 00:30:16,000
Speaker 1: North American at this point where Phillips is trying to

523
00:30:16,000 --> 00:30:18,000
Speaker 1: get the license from Midway, So, hey, can we just

524
00:30:18,200 --> 00:30:20,920
Speaker 1: make a game with you guys with the license and

525
00:30:22,200 --> 00:30:25,800
Speaker 1: the company Midway says no, we're not giving you a license.

526
00:30:26,160 --> 00:30:29,640
Speaker 1: So Average kind of building a game that's not even

527
00:30:29,680 --> 00:30:32,800
Speaker 1: done yet. He's told that we don't have the license.

528
00:30:32,880 --> 00:30:36,080
Speaker 1: So Average continues to build this game, and it turns

529
00:30:36,080 --> 00:30:38,160
Speaker 1: out to be Casey Munchkin, right, the idea of being

530
00:30:38,200 --> 00:30:41,840
Speaker 1: to make a game similar to pac Man without being

531
00:30:42,000 --> 00:30:45,280
Speaker 1: exactly pac Man, and also the idea of making this

532
00:30:45,360 --> 00:30:49,280
Speaker 1: quote unquote better than the arcade version. So it was

533
00:30:50,080 --> 00:30:54,400
Speaker 1: it wasn't built as a clone of pac Man, but

534
00:30:54,720 --> 00:30:58,320
Speaker 1: you know it's undeniable that it shares a lot of

535
00:30:58,360 --> 00:31:01,760
Speaker 1: similarities to pac Man. Yeah, so Average finishes this game

536
00:31:01,800 --> 00:31:04,520
Speaker 1: called Casey Munchkin. North American says, can we review the game?

537
00:31:04,560 --> 00:31:06,720
Speaker 1: We want to make sure it's totally different from pac Man,

538
00:31:07,280 --> 00:31:08,840
Speaker 1: and so they see the game, they go, okay, we

539
00:31:08,880 --> 00:31:11,760
Speaker 1: need to change some things. First, change the protagonist's color.

540
00:31:11,920 --> 00:31:14,560
Speaker 1: He's not going to be yellow, so that that's a

541
00:31:14,560 --> 00:31:16,920
Speaker 1: big flag. So they change the color of Munchkin from

542
00:31:16,920 --> 00:31:21,360
Speaker 1: the yellow to blue. They also told retailers, do not

543
00:31:21,680 --> 00:31:24,880
Speaker 1: call this pac Man, do not reference pac Man. Whatever

544
00:31:24,920 --> 00:31:27,640
Speaker 1: you do, don't call it pac Man. So what actually

545
00:31:27,680 --> 00:31:31,440
Speaker 1: happens in reality, retailers call it Odysse's pac Man or

546
00:31:31,440 --> 00:31:35,440
Speaker 1: a pac Man pac game because that's gonna sell copies

547
00:31:35,480 --> 00:31:37,800
Speaker 1: to customers, and that's what the stores are concerned with.

548
00:31:37,880 --> 00:31:41,160
Speaker 1: They don't the stores aren't concerned with copyright. They're concerned

549
00:31:41,200 --> 00:31:45,320
Speaker 1: with moving inventory. Yeah, so that didn't help anything, were Philip,

550
00:31:45,360 --> 00:31:47,280
Speaker 1: because they're like, no, don't do that, don't do that.

551
00:31:47,680 --> 00:31:50,360
Speaker 1: And so Atari gets wind of this, they go, listen,

552
00:31:50,640 --> 00:31:54,000
Speaker 1: we're pursuing you because you are printing on our copyright. Here.

553
00:31:54,120 --> 00:31:55,400
Speaker 1: We have the rights to do this. You don't have

554
00:31:55,440 --> 00:31:57,440
Speaker 1: any rights to do this. And they look for a

555
00:31:57,440 --> 00:32:00,120
Speaker 1: primary injunction to get this game off the shelves. They

556
00:32:00,120 --> 00:32:03,120
Speaker 1: don't want this game being sold. And in the first case,

557
00:32:04,080 --> 00:32:07,160
Speaker 1: Atari loses. Okay, a story does not get their injunction

558
00:32:07,200 --> 00:32:08,920
Speaker 1: and to start with, and that's how it ends up

559
00:32:08,960 --> 00:32:11,120
Speaker 1: at the Court of Appeal Seventh Circuit, because the Court

560
00:32:11,160 --> 00:32:13,960
Speaker 1: of Appeals is taking this appeal to find out what

561
00:32:14,000 --> 00:32:19,080
Speaker 1: happens and they decide it is infringement, which will make

562
00:32:19,120 --> 00:32:21,960
Speaker 1: your head explode as we describe the games, because it's

563
00:32:22,160 --> 00:32:26,640
Speaker 1: very strange why this in this case there is infringement

564
00:32:26,760 --> 00:32:31,239
Speaker 1: versus the before we get into that, just so just

565
00:32:31,280 --> 00:32:33,720
Speaker 1: so people can kind of understand. And I don't mean

566
00:32:33,720 --> 00:32:35,600
Speaker 1: to put you on the spot, I ad but can

567
00:32:35,640 --> 00:32:39,120
Speaker 1: you can you sort of give an overview of of

568
00:32:39,280 --> 00:32:42,880
Speaker 1: what the appeals process is in case? Could because as

569
00:32:42,880 --> 00:32:45,880
Speaker 1: you pointed out, Atari had lost the case but then

570
00:32:45,960 --> 00:32:48,880
Speaker 1: was able to take it to another court. Well, I mean,

571
00:32:48,880 --> 00:32:52,160
Speaker 1: so that's the first case was adjudicated, and is this

572
00:32:52,360 --> 00:32:54,320
Speaker 1: in this particular case you have to show you look

573
00:32:54,360 --> 00:32:56,880
Speaker 1: for an injunction, you have to show irreparable harm. Okay,

574
00:32:57,200 --> 00:32:59,440
Speaker 1: if you're looking for irreparable harm, you have to explain

575
00:32:59,520 --> 00:33:02,560
Speaker 1: that you cannot be made whole with money, right, so

576
00:33:02,640 --> 00:33:05,640
Speaker 1: if you have, uh, if you're talking about Apple and Samsung,

577
00:33:05,680 --> 00:33:07,880
Speaker 1: they're like, hey, look, don't sell those phones, and the

578
00:33:07,960 --> 00:33:09,960
Speaker 1: courts like no, you know what, if if this stays

579
00:33:09,960 --> 00:33:11,840
Speaker 1: on the shelves, they can just pay you money. Because

580
00:33:11,840 --> 00:33:13,479
Speaker 1: that's only that's the only thing you're gonna lose. You're

581
00:33:13,520 --> 00:33:16,040
Speaker 1: just gonna lose on profits, Well, that's what they'll pay

582
00:33:16,040 --> 00:33:19,760
Speaker 1: out the same thing with this kind of deal. The court,

583
00:33:19,800 --> 00:33:23,520
Speaker 1: the lower court found, look, there was no irreparable harm here,

584
00:33:23,520 --> 00:33:26,640
Speaker 1: so we're not going to stop this game from being sold. Um.

585
00:33:26,760 --> 00:33:29,920
Speaker 1: Then Atari just basically files a motion of appeal. I mean,

586
00:33:29,920 --> 00:33:32,360
Speaker 1: that's basically what that works. They file the appeal, and

587
00:33:32,360 --> 00:33:36,360
Speaker 1: then this court decides to take a look at everything

588
00:33:36,400 --> 00:33:38,040
Speaker 1: that happened in the first case, and pretty much I

589
00:33:38,120 --> 00:33:41,720
Speaker 1: believe in this. In this appeals process, all the facts

590
00:33:41,760 --> 00:33:43,560
Speaker 1: are pretty much stipulated. So it's not a heck of

591
00:33:43,560 --> 00:33:47,360
Speaker 1: a lot of disagreement, not having like an argument about um, oh,

592
00:33:47,440 --> 00:33:50,280
Speaker 1: you know, these two guys didn't see the airport. They

593
00:33:50,320 --> 00:33:54,600
Speaker 1: saw it somewhere in Atari's headquarters. Whatever facts are in

594
00:33:54,800 --> 00:33:57,680
Speaker 1: that first case are kind of taken as as that.

595
00:33:58,200 --> 00:34:00,960
Speaker 1: It's just like this is reality. We we can't can't

596
00:34:00,960 --> 00:34:05,840
Speaker 1: look outside of this reality. We just decided this was correctly. Uh,

597
00:34:05,960 --> 00:34:09,680
Speaker 1: if this, if the court decision was correct in this case, exactly,

598
00:34:09,760 --> 00:34:13,040
Speaker 1: they're looking at the court abuse discretion they do anything strange.

599
00:34:13,480 --> 00:34:17,080
Speaker 1: It's a very narrow kind of thing, and so it's

600
00:34:17,120 --> 00:34:19,319
Speaker 1: it's you're not gonna see a lot of if you

601
00:34:19,320 --> 00:34:21,800
Speaker 1: ever wanted to see a Court of Appeals kind of argument,

602
00:34:22,040 --> 00:34:25,560
Speaker 1: I feel like I really want to. No, it's not

603
00:34:25,600 --> 00:34:29,160
Speaker 1: going to be an exciting defendant plaintiff argument. It's gonna

604
00:34:29,160 --> 00:34:31,400
Speaker 1: be like, well, that's what happened, and that's what happened.

605
00:34:31,800 --> 00:34:36,440
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. That's it pretty well at any rate. The

606
00:34:36,480 --> 00:34:39,360
Speaker 1: other thing to keep in mind is that before we

607
00:34:39,400 --> 00:34:41,880
Speaker 1: talk about how the court described these games, because it

608
00:34:41,960 --> 00:34:45,720
Speaker 1: is pretty awesome. Uh. The the other thing to remember

609
00:34:45,840 --> 00:34:49,720
Speaker 1: is that Casey Munchkin came out on the Odyssey before

610
00:34:49,800 --> 00:34:54,439
Speaker 1: atriis uh Port, I guess Port is probably being way

611
00:34:54,440 --> 00:34:58,000
Speaker 1: too generous before Atris version of pac Man could come

612
00:34:58,040 --> 00:35:02,840
Speaker 1: out for the twenty hundred. So that was also an issue.

613
00:35:03,080 --> 00:35:06,399
Speaker 1: Was that seeing this this other home video game representation

614
00:35:06,520 --> 00:35:08,920
Speaker 1: of a very similar idea come out on a different

615
00:35:08,960 --> 00:35:13,040
Speaker 1: console before Autari could have its version come out on

616
00:35:13,040 --> 00:35:17,360
Speaker 1: the twenty that could. I'm guessing that also gave Atari

617
00:35:17,480 --> 00:35:20,960
Speaker 1: some some ammunition to say, look, they're even trying to

618
00:35:21,880 --> 00:35:23,920
Speaker 1: um to edge us out before we can get our

619
00:35:23,960 --> 00:35:27,480
Speaker 1: product on store shelves. But let's talk about how the

620
00:35:27,520 --> 00:35:33,760
Speaker 1: court described these games. So, uh, these descriptions are written

621
00:35:33,880 --> 00:35:37,040
Speaker 1: up in court documents. You can actually read the full

622
00:35:37,280 --> 00:35:41,600
Speaker 1: descriptions because uh, they're pretty long, but you you pulled

623
00:35:41,640 --> 00:35:44,040
Speaker 1: out an excerpt that I think is pretty awesome for

624
00:35:44,520 --> 00:35:48,799
Speaker 1: the description of of of what pac Man is. So

625
00:35:48,880 --> 00:35:51,200
Speaker 1: this is directly from the court case and they're explaining

626
00:35:51,520 --> 00:35:53,920
Speaker 1: the copyrighted work in this case, pac Man, the copyright

627
00:35:54,080 --> 00:35:57,600
Speaker 1: version A pac Man is an electronic arcade maze chase game.

628
00:35:57,960 --> 00:36:00,480
Speaker 1: Very basically the game board, which you appers on a

629
00:36:00,480 --> 00:36:03,680
Speaker 1: television like screen, consists of a fixed maze, a central

630
00:36:03,800 --> 00:36:09,279
Speaker 1: character parentheses expressed as a gobbler uh, four pursuit characters

631
00:36:09,280 --> 00:36:14,560
Speaker 1: expressed as ghost monsters, several hundred evenly spaced pink dots

632
00:36:14,640 --> 00:36:18,280
Speaker 1: which line the pathways of the maze or enlarge pink dots,

633
00:36:19,080 --> 00:36:23,080
Speaker 1: power capsules approximately located each of the mazes, four corners,

634
00:36:23,080 --> 00:36:26,040
Speaker 1: and various colored fruit symbols which appear near the middle

635
00:36:26,080 --> 00:36:29,359
Speaker 1: of the maze during the play of the game. Yeah,

636
00:36:29,400 --> 00:36:32,640
Speaker 1: and it goes on to describe in great detail what

637
00:36:32,800 --> 00:36:35,839
Speaker 1: a pac Man game consists of, even going so far

638
00:36:35,880 --> 00:36:39,719
Speaker 1: as to explain how you accumulate points through uh having

639
00:36:39,719 --> 00:36:44,880
Speaker 1: your gobbler gobble pellets, including the power capsules, having having

640
00:36:44,880 --> 00:36:49,200
Speaker 1: your gobbler gobble, the various fruit symbols, as well as

641
00:36:49,239 --> 00:36:52,960
Speaker 1: having your gobbler gobble the ghosts whenever the power capsules

642
00:36:53,000 --> 00:36:57,280
Speaker 1: allow for role reversal and the hunter becomes or hunted

643
00:36:57,320 --> 00:36:59,680
Speaker 1: becomes the hunter. I guess in that case, I really

644
00:36:59,800 --> 00:37:02,520
Speaker 1: really wish these like I wish these court descriptions were

645
00:37:02,600 --> 00:37:04,560
Speaker 1: like on the back of boxes when you bought the

646
00:37:04,640 --> 00:37:07,040
Speaker 1: game with eles. When this period of vulnerability is about

647
00:37:07,040 --> 00:37:09,840
Speaker 1: to end, the monsters warned the player by flashing alternative

648
00:37:09,920 --> 00:37:13,200
Speaker 1: alternately blue and white before my turning to their original colors.

649
00:37:13,239 --> 00:37:15,600
Speaker 1: To be fair, it sounds a lot like I mean,

650
00:37:15,800 --> 00:37:18,120
Speaker 1: these games when they got them for the home consoles

651
00:37:18,200 --> 00:37:22,399
Speaker 1: came with instruction booklets, and sometimes the descriptions sounded kind

652
00:37:22,400 --> 00:37:26,160
Speaker 1: of like that. So I wrote a little note here

653
00:37:26,200 --> 00:37:29,520
Speaker 1: where because I read the same the same court notes

654
00:37:29,560 --> 00:37:32,160
Speaker 1: as I as did. And I love the fact that

655
00:37:32,239 --> 00:37:38,000
Speaker 1: when they were referencing the Casey Munchkin game, which you know,

656
00:37:38,040 --> 00:37:41,279
Speaker 1: they point out had a lot of the same elements

657
00:37:41,320 --> 00:37:45,320
Speaker 1: as the pac Man game, they said that the ghost monsters,

658
00:37:45,360 --> 00:37:48,400
Speaker 1: the three ghost sponsors and Casey Munchkin rather than the

659
00:37:48,440 --> 00:37:52,480
Speaker 1: four in pact Man, were quote much spookier in quote

660
00:37:53,200 --> 00:37:55,560
Speaker 1: that's right, because they have like little tentacles or or

661
00:37:55,960 --> 00:37:59,840
Speaker 1: beat or something like that, and they creepily move and

662
00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:03,320
Speaker 1: they also have antenna, so they're they're they're extra animated.

663
00:38:03,360 --> 00:38:04,759
Speaker 1: I believe that was one of the other things they

664
00:38:04,800 --> 00:38:06,480
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure the game look different, and it

665
00:38:06,520 --> 00:38:10,480
Speaker 1: does look pretty different. There's a cool little corral in

666
00:38:10,520 --> 00:38:14,680
Speaker 1: the middle that changes versus compared to the corral with

667
00:38:14,760 --> 00:38:16,839
Speaker 1: the pac Man. Yeah, yeah, and the pact Man. It's

668
00:38:16,920 --> 00:38:18,960
Speaker 1: one box that has the ghosts in and the ghost

669
00:38:18,960 --> 00:38:20,920
Speaker 1: will come out at the top of the box. In

670
00:38:21,480 --> 00:38:24,440
Speaker 1: Casey Munchkin, all the ghosts are piled on top of

671
00:38:24,480 --> 00:38:28,040
Speaker 1: each other. The box is it's like a three sided box.

672
00:38:28,080 --> 00:38:32,000
Speaker 1: There's a there's one side missing, and it rotates ninety

673
00:38:32,040 --> 00:38:34,960
Speaker 1: degrees every few seconds, so the ghost can only come

674
00:38:34,960 --> 00:38:37,840
Speaker 1: out one direction, depending upon you know, whichever way the

675
00:38:37,840 --> 00:38:40,239
Speaker 1: box is facing at that given moment. That's the only

676
00:38:40,440 --> 00:38:42,600
Speaker 1: way the ghost can come out, which is kind of interesting.

677
00:38:42,800 --> 00:38:46,399
Speaker 1: I guess it could be a strategic benefit depending upon

678
00:38:46,440 --> 00:38:50,799
Speaker 1: where you're Munchkin was at that given moment. They also

679
00:38:50,840 --> 00:38:54,120
Speaker 1: said that the Gobbler and Casey Munchkin has a personality,

680
00:38:54,239 --> 00:38:58,000
Speaker 1: and that pac Man didn't, so sick Burn Yeah, that

681
00:38:58,000 --> 00:39:01,200
Speaker 1: that is a pretty interesting Uh what do you call

682
00:39:01,640 --> 00:39:05,000
Speaker 1: expression observation by the court. I'm not exactly sure how

683
00:39:05,120 --> 00:39:08,520
Speaker 1: Casey shows a personality as a somewhat of a diamond

684
00:39:08,560 --> 00:39:12,799
Speaker 1: shaped blue faced gobbler. Well, he he does. He If

685
00:39:12,840 --> 00:39:17,680
Speaker 1: he wins, like if you clear out a level, he smiles,

686
00:39:17,920 --> 00:39:21,280
Speaker 1: it turns so that it's facing like the faces facing

687
00:39:21,320 --> 00:39:24,319
Speaker 1: the viewer as opposed to being in profile, and you

688
00:39:24,360 --> 00:39:27,240
Speaker 1: get a smile. Looks kind of like Kermit the Frog smiling.

689
00:39:27,280 --> 00:39:29,880
Speaker 1: If Kermit also had like little horns or antenna on

690
00:39:29,920 --> 00:39:33,520
Speaker 1: top of his head. And then uh, if he got

691
00:39:33,760 --> 00:39:39,360
Speaker 1: gobbled by a ghost, he frowns before disappearing. So there's

692
00:39:39,120 --> 00:39:41,919
Speaker 1: the fact that he could smile and frowned apparently gives

693
00:39:42,000 --> 00:39:45,160
Speaker 1: him some personality. I think pac Man's got a personality

694
00:39:45,280 --> 00:39:48,960
Speaker 1: just all business. She's like, I got no time for smiling,

695
00:39:49,520 --> 00:39:52,640
Speaker 1: no time for frowning, died. There are pellets for chomping,

696
00:39:52,640 --> 00:39:55,680
Speaker 1: all right, I gotta I gotta end up chomping these pellets.

697
00:39:55,680 --> 00:39:57,960
Speaker 1: There there could be a tricycle that shows up at

698
00:39:57,960 --> 00:40:00,640
Speaker 1: some point that I need to eat. He very cautious,

699
00:40:00,680 --> 00:40:03,399
Speaker 1: you know, fruit keeps disappearing on I mean it might

700
00:40:03,400 --> 00:40:06,560
Speaker 1: be paranoid. I believe pac Man might be a little paranoid,

701
00:40:06,560 --> 00:40:08,200
Speaker 1: but maybe I'm reading too much. It might be you

702
00:40:08,280 --> 00:40:12,400
Speaker 1: might bet on pac Man here. Two. So this is

703
00:40:12,400 --> 00:40:15,480
Speaker 1: a very it's just fun to hear the way they

704
00:40:15,520 --> 00:40:17,040
Speaker 1: describe these games. They have to think of it in

705
00:40:17,040 --> 00:40:19,480
Speaker 1: the abstract, because this is partially, this is not partially.

706
00:40:19,520 --> 00:40:22,680
Speaker 1: This is very important to determine what parts of this

707
00:40:22,719 --> 00:40:25,680
Speaker 1: game can be protected by copyright and what part isn't.

708
00:40:25,760 --> 00:40:28,520
Speaker 1: Because again, if there's only one way to do something,

709
00:40:29,040 --> 00:40:31,600
Speaker 1: well it's like the meteor case. And if there's more

710
00:40:31,640 --> 00:40:35,239
Speaker 1: than one way, and I mean like in significant ways

711
00:40:35,239 --> 00:40:37,080
Speaker 1: it's more than one way to do something, well maybe

712
00:40:37,080 --> 00:40:40,359
Speaker 1: that's infringement. Yeah. So some of the things we need

713
00:40:40,400 --> 00:40:42,520
Speaker 1: to point out or some of the differences between these games,

714
00:40:42,520 --> 00:40:44,560
Speaker 1: because they sound like they're fairly similar. But there were

715
00:40:44,560 --> 00:40:49,000
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting differences between the two. One was

716
00:40:49,040 --> 00:40:52,840
Speaker 1: that in in pac Man, you have these hundreds of pellets,

717
00:40:53,320 --> 00:40:58,640
Speaker 1: presumably depending on depending upon how it's depicted. Obviously, the

718
00:40:58,680 --> 00:41:01,560
Speaker 1: Atari version was a lot more limited. The Atari home

719
00:41:01,640 --> 00:41:03,600
Speaker 1: game version was a lot more limited than the the

720
00:41:04,040 --> 00:41:09,200
Speaker 1: the Arcade version. But Casey Munchkin, they had twelve dots

721
00:41:09,200 --> 00:41:12,920
Speaker 1: per level. The dots could actually move through the maze, however,

722
00:41:13,040 --> 00:41:16,120
Speaker 1: so it gave an extra element of challenge. Plus in

723
00:41:16,160 --> 00:41:19,359
Speaker 1: the Casey Munchkin maze, there was one pathway that would

724
00:41:19,440 --> 00:41:22,120
Speaker 1: end with a dead end, so you had to be

725
00:41:22,160 --> 00:41:24,160
Speaker 1: careful if the dot was down there and you need

726
00:41:24,160 --> 00:41:26,439
Speaker 1: to retrieve it, you had to make sure you could

727
00:41:26,440 --> 00:41:29,160
Speaker 1: do so and get out before being trapped by a

728
00:41:29,160 --> 00:41:33,040
Speaker 1: ghost because there's no other way out. Um. It also

729
00:41:33,120 --> 00:41:39,040
Speaker 1: had a different different game options with Casey Munchkin, including

730
00:41:39,080 --> 00:41:42,920
Speaker 1: one that would turn the level invisible around you whenever

731
00:41:42,960 --> 00:41:45,080
Speaker 1: you moved, so you had to stay still, like if

732
00:41:45,080 --> 00:41:46,800
Speaker 1: you hit a if you hit a wall and you

733
00:41:46,800 --> 00:41:48,839
Speaker 1: couldn't move any further, you have to stop so that

734
00:41:48,960 --> 00:41:51,239
Speaker 1: it would show up and you could see whether you

735
00:41:51,239 --> 00:41:53,160
Speaker 1: could turn in a different direction or if you need

736
00:41:53,160 --> 00:41:56,160
Speaker 1: to back out or whatever, So that was also interesting.

737
00:41:57,360 --> 00:42:01,319
Speaker 1: They also talked about how the pellets would be the

738
00:42:01,360 --> 00:42:04,360
Speaker 1: power pellets in Casey Munchkin because there were power power

739
00:42:04,400 --> 00:42:06,239
Speaker 1: pellets in that as well. It also allowed you to

740
00:42:06,800 --> 00:42:09,480
Speaker 1: turn the tables on the ghosts the three ghosts in

741
00:42:09,680 --> 00:42:12,799
Speaker 1: Casey Munchkin versus the Foreign pact Man and chomp on

742
00:42:12,880 --> 00:42:15,960
Speaker 1: them for a short amount of time, but they were

743
00:42:16,160 --> 00:42:19,279
Speaker 1: randomly distributed among those twelve pellets as opposed to being

744
00:42:19,280 --> 00:42:21,719
Speaker 1: in the four corners like it was with pac Man.

745
00:42:22,680 --> 00:42:24,600
Speaker 1: Uh So, there were a lot of differences here, a

746
00:42:24,640 --> 00:42:27,560
Speaker 1: lot of In fact, I would argue there appear to

747
00:42:27,680 --> 00:42:32,920
Speaker 1: be more significant differences in the basic presentation of the

748
00:42:32,960 --> 00:42:36,600
Speaker 1: game than you saw with Asteroids versus Meteors. If you

749
00:42:36,640 --> 00:42:40,720
Speaker 1: were standing at an Asteroids cabinet and you were standing

750
00:42:40,760 --> 00:42:43,080
Speaker 1: next to a meteor cabinet there next to each other,

751
00:42:43,120 --> 00:42:45,919
Speaker 1: you just standing up front them, they would look really similar. Okay,

752
00:42:45,920 --> 00:42:48,799
Speaker 1: I'm not even kidding. They look extraordinarily similar obviously once

753
00:42:48,800 --> 00:42:50,799
Speaker 1: in collar, once in black and white. But if you

754
00:42:50,840 --> 00:42:55,040
Speaker 1: put Casey Munchkin versus pac Man, there is a distinct difference.

755
00:42:55,080 --> 00:42:57,840
Speaker 1: I mean even the actual maze when it comes to

756
00:42:57,880 --> 00:43:00,440
Speaker 1: the styling of the maze. Instead of a being this

757
00:43:00,640 --> 00:43:05,439
Speaker 1: kind of rounded, hollow kind of maze, you have these

758
00:43:05,600 --> 00:43:09,439
Speaker 1: very hard lines the purple, and you do that moving

759
00:43:09,480 --> 00:43:12,359
Speaker 1: corral in the middle. That's that sounds pretty interesting. And

760
00:43:12,400 --> 00:43:14,480
Speaker 1: then there is this the mention of the dots, like

761
00:43:14,520 --> 00:43:17,240
Speaker 1: you were saying that move in Casey Munchkin Versus Pacman,

762
00:43:17,239 --> 00:43:20,439
Speaker 1: which are stationary but there's this great line in here.

763
00:43:20,800 --> 00:43:23,040
Speaker 1: He says, you know, as the gobbler munches more dots,

764
00:43:23,080 --> 00:43:25,360
Speaker 1: the speed of the remaining dots progressively increases, and the

765
00:43:25,440 --> 00:43:27,360
Speaker 1: last dot moves at the same speed as the gobbler.

766
00:43:27,680 --> 00:43:30,279
Speaker 1: And the words of the district court, the last dot

767
00:43:30,480 --> 00:43:33,360
Speaker 1: cannot be caught by overtaking it. It must be munched

768
00:43:33,400 --> 00:43:38,600
Speaker 1: by strategy. So there's an actual that's a great line.

769
00:43:38,640 --> 00:43:40,239
Speaker 1: That's true. Though if you have if you have to

770
00:43:40,280 --> 00:43:42,520
Speaker 1: have the strategy elements, you don't have the exact same

771
00:43:42,560 --> 00:43:45,280
Speaker 1: thing in Pact Man. You have that double wrap around

772
00:43:45,280 --> 00:43:46,560
Speaker 1: maze where you can just leave for the right, show

773
00:43:46,600 --> 00:43:49,719
Speaker 1: up on the left. This this game is so far

774
00:43:49,960 --> 00:43:52,480
Speaker 1: it sounds very different. And as a student, I'm thinking, well,

775
00:43:52,520 --> 00:43:56,120
Speaker 1: clearly the Casey Munchkin ganned gang, it's going to be fine.

776
00:43:56,480 --> 00:44:00,400
Speaker 1: But nope, the court finds in favor of a and

777
00:44:00,480 --> 00:44:02,560
Speaker 1: you might say, well, how the heck can that happen.

778
00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:07,960
Speaker 1: So one of the elements that came to um Atari's

779
00:44:08,000 --> 00:44:11,200
Speaker 1: aid not on purpose, I mean, this was just something

780
00:44:11,239 --> 00:44:16,000
Speaker 1: that that ended up supporting Atari's argument was that when

781
00:44:16,000 --> 00:44:20,600
Speaker 1: you're looking at the implementation of a a maze chase game,

782
00:44:20,680 --> 00:44:24,759
Speaker 1: they actually categorized it as a maze chase game. The

783
00:44:24,840 --> 00:44:27,440
Speaker 1: court was able to look at other games that are

784
00:44:27,520 --> 00:44:31,759
Speaker 1: also within the category of maze chase games, but are

785
00:44:32,280 --> 00:44:37,160
Speaker 1: designed in a very different, distinct way from pac Man,

786
00:44:38,040 --> 00:44:41,959
Speaker 1: and so the argument could be made there are other

787
00:44:42,080 --> 00:44:47,200
Speaker 1: ways to depict this style of game without relying upon

788
00:44:47,239 --> 00:44:50,880
Speaker 1: the same basic design elements that pac Man used, and

789
00:44:52,040 --> 00:44:54,920
Speaker 1: that ended up being the crux of the argument, right,

790
00:44:54,960 --> 00:44:56,680
Speaker 1: I think it wasn't one of them. I think it's

791
00:44:56,719 --> 00:44:59,640
Speaker 1: a rally X was the name of the game, one

792
00:44:59,680 --> 00:45:04,280
Speaker 1: of the ones that they referenced. So, uh, they actually

793
00:45:04,320 --> 00:45:08,920
Speaker 1: said that because they the Casey Munchkin ended up copying

794
00:45:09,160 --> 00:45:12,000
Speaker 1: elements of pac Man that were integral to what pac

795
00:45:12,040 --> 00:45:16,480
Speaker 1: Man is. You know, it wasn't just uh, a facet

796
00:45:16,480 --> 00:45:18,880
Speaker 1: of pac Man. That didn't really matter. If that had

797
00:45:18,920 --> 00:45:20,960
Speaker 1: been the case, it might have gone a different way.

798
00:45:21,640 --> 00:45:25,960
Speaker 1: They said that it's it's fundamentally copying the what what

799
00:45:26,080 --> 00:45:28,759
Speaker 1: I guess you could argue is the essence of pac Man,

800
00:45:29,480 --> 00:45:34,319
Speaker 1: and that therefore, uh, this ended up being Atari had

801
00:45:34,320 --> 00:45:37,680
Speaker 1: a case, like a legitimate case against the Casey Munchkin game,

802
00:45:38,360 --> 00:45:41,400
Speaker 1: and they even said that, um, here's a quote. It

803
00:45:41,520 --> 00:45:45,719
Speaker 1: is enough that substantial parts were lifted. No plagiarists can

804
00:45:45,800 --> 00:45:48,759
Speaker 1: excuse the wrong by showing how much of his work

805
00:45:48,880 --> 00:45:52,000
Speaker 1: he did not pirate, which actually came from a previous case.

806
00:45:52,040 --> 00:45:56,319
Speaker 1: They used that as a precedent to state that it

807
00:45:56,360 --> 00:46:00,239
Speaker 1: doesn't matter if you have a lot of original work

808
00:46:00,760 --> 00:46:05,080
Speaker 1: that is surrounding a kernel, if that kernel has been

809
00:46:05,120 --> 00:46:08,520
Speaker 1: stolen from someone else, if it's a significant part of

810
00:46:08,600 --> 00:46:11,600
Speaker 1: someone else's work. And this starts to kind of creep

811
00:46:11,640 --> 00:46:14,640
Speaker 1: into the concept of fair use as well, because fair

812
00:46:14,719 --> 00:46:19,000
Speaker 1: use has elements in it where you're not just concerned

813
00:46:19,000 --> 00:46:22,680
Speaker 1: with how much was copied, but what was the nature

814
00:46:22,880 --> 00:46:26,719
Speaker 1: of the copied material. So, in other words, if i

815
00:46:26,840 --> 00:46:31,000
Speaker 1: As right something, and uh, and I end up copying

816
00:46:31,120 --> 00:46:33,920
Speaker 1: only a small amount of what i As has written,

817
00:46:33,960 --> 00:46:38,440
Speaker 1: it's I've written my own article. I'm not citing i

818
00:46:38,560 --> 00:46:41,280
Speaker 1: As so much as I am taking something he's written

819
00:46:41,280 --> 00:46:44,239
Speaker 1: and incorporating it within my own work. It may be

820
00:46:44,400 --> 00:46:47,759
Speaker 1: that I've only taken a couple of sentences from i As,

821
00:46:47,840 --> 00:46:49,799
Speaker 1: and you might think, well, that should be fair use

822
00:46:49,880 --> 00:46:52,600
Speaker 1: because it's a small amount. It's not, especially if i

823
00:46:52,680 --> 00:46:55,719
Speaker 1: As had published a very long piece from which I

824
00:46:55,800 --> 00:46:59,400
Speaker 1: took those couple of sentences. But if those couple of

825
00:46:59,440 --> 00:47:02,520
Speaker 1: sentences are at the very heart of what I as

826
00:47:02,600 --> 00:47:05,879
Speaker 1: was writing about, if that is instrumental in the point

827
00:47:05,960 --> 00:47:08,480
Speaker 1: he was making, a court might say, well, no, this

828
00:47:08,560 --> 00:47:11,520
Speaker 1: is a case of plagiarism. You're not. It doesn't matter

829
00:47:11,640 --> 00:47:14,440
Speaker 1: that it was two sentences. What matters is the nature

830
00:47:14,440 --> 00:47:16,560
Speaker 1: of what was written. And that was part of what

831
00:47:16,880 --> 00:47:19,520
Speaker 1: played into the court's decision in this case, saying that

832
00:47:19,960 --> 00:47:23,200
Speaker 1: the elements that were taken, while you can argue they

833
00:47:23,200 --> 00:47:27,280
Speaker 1: were augmented or tweaked or changed or enhanced or however

834
00:47:27,320 --> 00:47:31,000
Speaker 1: you want to put it, they are the crucial elements

835
00:47:31,000 --> 00:47:35,040
Speaker 1: of what makes pac Man pac Man. Yeah. One of

836
00:47:35,040 --> 00:47:37,920
Speaker 1: the other big things about this, like there, as you

837
00:47:37,920 --> 00:47:40,879
Speaker 1: were saying, you get copyright protection on lots of different things.

838
00:47:40,960 --> 00:47:42,799
Speaker 1: And if there's a couple of sentences you took for me,

839
00:47:42,840 --> 00:47:44,640
Speaker 1: and it's it's at the essence or it's the real

840
00:47:44,920 --> 00:47:47,480
Speaker 1: crux of what I've been writing, that could be taken

841
00:47:47,480 --> 00:47:49,800
Speaker 1: as plasireism. But there's a lot of things that aren't

842
00:47:49,880 --> 00:47:53,440
Speaker 1: taken as infringement that there's a illegal term for its.

843
00:47:53,480 --> 00:47:58,000
Speaker 1: It seems a fair it's basically having events that naturally

844
00:47:58,040 --> 00:48:00,440
Speaker 1: would follow, so if somebody decides to have of I

845
00:48:00,480 --> 00:48:03,040
Speaker 1: don't know, like, let's say a three part story arc

846
00:48:03,080 --> 00:48:04,920
Speaker 1: where you have like a guy and a girl and

847
00:48:04,920 --> 00:48:07,040
Speaker 1: they meet and act one and then the act two

848
00:48:07,080 --> 00:48:09,320
Speaker 1: they break up, and then act three they get back together.

849
00:48:10,680 --> 00:48:15,560
Speaker 1: You can't copyright that that structure, right, because that's that's

850
00:48:16,000 --> 00:48:18,120
Speaker 1: natural less seems like how things work. And if that

851
00:48:18,160 --> 00:48:20,359
Speaker 1: actually happened, they would only be like one rom com

852
00:48:20,520 --> 00:48:22,440
Speaker 1: right there, the only one romantic comedy that the only

853
00:48:22,520 --> 00:48:25,080
Speaker 1: ones ever existed, and it could never happen. Tom Hanks

854
00:48:25,080 --> 00:48:27,640
Speaker 1: would have been out of work in the late nineties exactly,

855
00:48:27,760 --> 00:48:30,040
Speaker 1: or he would be doing the reboot every two years

856
00:48:30,120 --> 00:48:32,640
Speaker 1: and they would re license it. Uh. And so the

857
00:48:33,120 --> 00:48:36,160
Speaker 1: scenes of pac Man, the things that would make sense

858
00:48:36,719 --> 00:48:39,600
Speaker 1: that anybody could copy is what the court was saying

859
00:48:39,600 --> 00:48:41,719
Speaker 1: here with certain things the maze and scoring table or

860
00:48:41,719 --> 00:48:44,239
Speaker 1: standard game devices, So anybody can have a maze and

861
00:48:44,480 --> 00:48:47,680
Speaker 1: scoring table, nothing wrong with that. The tunnel exits are

862
00:48:47,800 --> 00:48:51,280
Speaker 1: nothing more than commonly used wraparound concept adapted to amaze

863
00:48:51,360 --> 00:48:54,360
Speaker 1: chase games. That's fine. You want to use dots, that's fine.

864
00:48:54,960 --> 00:48:59,120
Speaker 1: And the real problem here was the fans offul creations

865
00:48:59,440 --> 00:49:03,960
Speaker 1: pac Man and ghosts that they're this gobbling character that

866
00:49:04,239 --> 00:49:08,400
Speaker 1: just like wanders around popping pills and being chased by ghosts.

867
00:49:09,040 --> 00:49:11,439
Speaker 1: This starting to sound like an episode of Breaking Bad.

868
00:49:12,760 --> 00:49:17,480
Speaker 1: This particular implementation this expression is pac Man. This is

869
00:49:17,840 --> 00:49:20,279
Speaker 1: you could do anything. Riley X is a car game.

870
00:49:20,520 --> 00:49:22,400
Speaker 1: Do you have a car running around and it's probably

871
00:49:22,400 --> 00:49:25,440
Speaker 1: trying to pick up some kind of points based item,

872
00:49:25,480 --> 00:49:27,959
Speaker 1: maybe it's gas canisters or whatever. The heck, you would

873
00:49:27,960 --> 00:49:30,759
Speaker 1: have never play their pellets pellets as well. I had

874
00:49:30,800 --> 00:49:33,319
Speaker 1: that game as well. So you've got pellets. But and

875
00:49:33,320 --> 00:49:35,279
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a scoring table on the top left.

876
00:49:35,480 --> 00:49:38,080
Speaker 1: Nobody's saying you can't have a scoring table my scoring

877
00:49:38,120 --> 00:49:39,600
Speaker 1: table in the middle of the screen where so you

878
00:49:39,600 --> 00:49:42,840
Speaker 1: can't see it. That'd be ridiculous. There's lots of different

879
00:49:42,840 --> 00:49:47,319
Speaker 1: elements that you can do in a similar game. But

880
00:49:48,280 --> 00:49:50,520
Speaker 1: if you're just a ghost, that's not ghosts. If you're

881
00:49:50,560 --> 00:49:53,800
Speaker 1: if you're a gobbler, you better look a little different

882
00:49:54,040 --> 00:49:56,440
Speaker 1: as a gobbler. That's basically the point. And the monster,

883
00:49:56,640 --> 00:49:59,200
Speaker 1: the monster is coming after you better not be ghost

884
00:49:59,320 --> 00:50:03,040
Speaker 1: monsters if you If if those elements are similar enough

885
00:50:03,080 --> 00:50:06,120
Speaker 1: to pac Man, then it's very hard for you to

886
00:50:06,160 --> 00:50:09,040
Speaker 1: make a commencing argument that you weren't copying pac Man.

887
00:50:09,640 --> 00:50:11,719
Speaker 1: This could be a Frankenstein game, right, You can Frankenstein's

888
00:50:11,719 --> 00:50:13,960
Speaker 1: monster running around he's trying to get pellets or I

889
00:50:13,960 --> 00:50:15,759
Speaker 1: don't know, other body parts might be a little bit

890
00:50:15,800 --> 00:50:19,000
Speaker 1: disturbing at that level of game, being chased by villagers.

891
00:50:19,400 --> 00:50:22,640
Speaker 1: That would be effectively similar. Right. It sounds like a

892
00:50:22,680 --> 00:50:25,520
Speaker 1: pac Man game to me, but the expression is very different. Now,

893
00:50:25,520 --> 00:50:28,600
Speaker 1: granted it would require all kinds of other licenses. Potentially,

894
00:50:29,040 --> 00:50:30,680
Speaker 1: Uh if if there was a movie out at the

895
00:50:30,719 --> 00:50:33,240
Speaker 1: time or whatever is going on, and the court's like, listen,

896
00:50:33,239 --> 00:50:36,960
Speaker 1: this is going to cause Atari a reparable harm. Atari

897
00:50:37,000 --> 00:50:39,080
Speaker 1: doesn't even have the game out, and you have something

898
00:50:39,080 --> 00:50:43,200
Speaker 1: that looks just like, well, it's something that's the very

899
00:50:43,280 --> 00:50:45,319
Speaker 1: very similar to the point where there is infringement. You're

900
00:50:45,320 --> 00:50:49,520
Speaker 1: infringing on Atari's copyright. If they don't have this game stopped,

901
00:50:50,040 --> 00:50:52,640
Speaker 1: they're gonna lose market share. But this could be damaging.

902
00:50:52,640 --> 00:50:54,880
Speaker 1: And the court makes mention it's kind of funny to

903
00:50:54,880 --> 00:50:57,600
Speaker 1: even read something like this. They know the Odyssey games

904
00:50:57,640 --> 00:51:01,960
Speaker 1: cannot be played in an Atari, nor vice persa like, well, yeah,

905
00:51:02,000 --> 00:51:04,160
Speaker 1: of course not. But this was a concept that was

906
00:51:04,200 --> 00:51:06,000
Speaker 1: kind of important because if it's are you wasn't losing

907
00:51:06,000 --> 00:51:08,880
Speaker 1: sales of its console, that would be very different, actually

908
00:51:08,920 --> 00:51:11,680
Speaker 1: might be a little different. But in this case that look,

909
00:51:11,920 --> 00:51:14,080
Speaker 1: you can't sell this game right now because you're causing

910
00:51:14,120 --> 00:51:16,560
Speaker 1: them huge harm. And I guess sent back to the

911
00:51:16,560 --> 00:51:20,399
Speaker 1: lower court to follow along with this to issue the injunction. Yeah,

912
00:51:20,440 --> 00:51:23,640
Speaker 1: and in fact, here's another quote from the court finding

913
00:51:23,680 --> 00:51:27,719
Speaker 1: which does not necessarily put gamers in a very good light.

914
00:51:28,040 --> 00:51:32,719
Speaker 1: It's kind of a backhanded comment. Video games, unlike an

915
00:51:32,840 --> 00:51:37,120
Speaker 1: artist's painting or even other audio visual works, appealed to

916
00:51:37,160 --> 00:51:42,040
Speaker 1: an audience that is fairly undiscriminating insofar as their concern

917
00:51:42,200 --> 00:51:46,719
Speaker 1: about more subtle differences in artistic expression. The main attraction

918
00:51:46,760 --> 00:51:49,200
Speaker 1: of a game such as Pac Man lies in the

919
00:51:49,239 --> 00:51:53,319
Speaker 1: stimulation provided by the intensity of the competition. A person

920
00:51:53,360 --> 00:51:56,640
Speaker 1: who is entranced by the play of the game quote

921
00:51:56,800 --> 00:52:00,520
Speaker 1: would be disposed to overlook end quote. Many of the

922
00:52:00,560 --> 00:52:04,880
Speaker 1: minor differences in detail and quote regard their aesthetic appeal

923
00:52:05,000 --> 00:52:09,400
Speaker 1: as the same. End quote. That does sound very damning

924
00:52:09,520 --> 00:52:12,920
Speaker 1: to the general video game playing public. Of two like

925
00:52:13,000 --> 00:52:15,600
Speaker 1: you guys, don't you guys don't care about the details.

926
00:52:15,680 --> 00:52:18,080
Speaker 1: You just want the feeling you get when you play

927
00:52:18,120 --> 00:52:22,080
Speaker 1: a game like this. Well, I mean, as you were

928
00:52:22,120 --> 00:52:24,000
Speaker 1: reading that back, and I've seen that line a bunch

929
00:52:24,040 --> 00:52:25,600
Speaker 1: of times, it just struck me. Now, you know, the

930
00:52:25,640 --> 00:52:30,359
Speaker 1: whole think about everything that people when when Apple gets

931
00:52:30,400 --> 00:52:33,160
Speaker 1: upset of people, they're like, hey, look, you're copying our

932
00:52:33,239 --> 00:52:35,759
Speaker 1: stuff and they're not going to care that it's not us.

933
00:52:35,880 --> 00:52:38,080
Speaker 1: That's effectively the same argument, isn't it. They're saying, wait

934
00:52:38,080 --> 00:52:40,200
Speaker 1: a minute, wait a minute, they're going to buy your

935
00:52:40,239 --> 00:52:41,840
Speaker 1: thing because it looks like my thing, and then they

936
00:52:41,880 --> 00:52:44,839
Speaker 1: don't really care that it's actually ours, And effectively it's

937
00:52:44,880 --> 00:52:47,239
Speaker 1: the same argument that the court says there, although it

938
00:52:47,320 --> 00:52:52,719
Speaker 1: does seriously sound patronizing. Yeah, the undiscriminating the one I

939
00:52:52,800 --> 00:52:54,839
Speaker 1: want to say, the unwashed masses who play video games

940
00:52:54,840 --> 00:53:01,279
Speaker 1: and the pizza parlors can't appreciate you can't appreciate kids.

941
00:53:01,320 --> 00:53:03,720
Speaker 1: So another another thing that I think is kind of funny.

942
00:53:03,760 --> 00:53:07,799
Speaker 1: It's it's sort of um uh, you know, tragically ironic

943
00:53:08,280 --> 00:53:13,040
Speaker 1: when you get down to it. Is Ultimately, Atari's pac

944
00:53:13,080 --> 00:53:16,600
Speaker 1: Man version for the was awful, and it is often

945
00:53:16,680 --> 00:53:20,520
Speaker 1: cited as one of the many reasons why the company

946
00:53:20,760 --> 00:53:26,480
Speaker 1: suffered so much, h so many setbacks, Bree and partly

947
00:53:26,600 --> 00:53:29,400
Speaker 1: why the video game crash, the home video game crash

948
00:53:30,080 --> 00:53:33,600
Speaker 1: three happened, it was that they had spent a lot

949
00:53:33,640 --> 00:53:37,760
Speaker 1: of money two create this pac Man game. They rushed

950
00:53:37,800 --> 00:53:40,280
Speaker 1: it so that they could get it out in time

951
00:53:40,320 --> 00:53:43,520
Speaker 1: for the Christmas season. It came out, and it was

952
00:53:43,760 --> 00:53:47,319
Speaker 1: a huge letdown because it was such a pale comparison

953
00:53:47,400 --> 00:53:53,280
Speaker 1: to the arcade experience that it was the actual pac

954
00:53:53,320 --> 00:53:57,319
Speaker 1: Man game that Attari made ultimately is what damaged the

955
00:53:57,360 --> 00:54:03,439
Speaker 1: company's actual, uh you know, um reputation. It wasn't that

956
00:54:03,840 --> 00:54:07,239
Speaker 1: some other game company created a game like pac Man

957
00:54:07,360 --> 00:54:11,560
Speaker 1: and that damaged Attari's reputation. It was Atari's own actions

958
00:54:11,640 --> 00:54:15,359
Speaker 1: that ultimately damaged its reputation. Now that is immaterial for

959
00:54:15,400 --> 00:54:18,200
Speaker 1: this case, has nothing to do with this case. It's

960
00:54:18,239 --> 00:54:21,960
Speaker 1: just an interesting little side note. I'm very curious if

961
00:54:22,960 --> 00:54:24,520
Speaker 1: I have to look this up. I should have looked

962
00:54:24,520 --> 00:54:27,160
Speaker 1: this up before this show. If Atari ever tried to

963
00:54:27,200 --> 00:54:31,000
Speaker 1: reach out to Phillips after they saw the progress of

964
00:54:31,000 --> 00:54:33,399
Speaker 1: the pac Man game where they have dashes instead of dots,

965
00:54:33,400 --> 00:54:36,120
Speaker 1: it's like, clearly average. When he's making his game for Phillips,

966
00:54:36,120 --> 00:54:37,960
Speaker 1: he knows how to put dots there, So I don't

967
00:54:38,000 --> 00:54:39,920
Speaker 1: know why pac Man didn't have it. Just kind of

968
00:54:39,920 --> 00:54:42,600
Speaker 1: curious why they weren't, like, hey, buddy, how about we

969
00:54:42,640 --> 00:54:46,120
Speaker 1: give you a license now ours looks horrible. We're really

970
00:54:46,160 --> 00:54:48,759
Speaker 1: sorry about that whole doing you thing. Yeah, maybe we'll

971
00:54:49,239 --> 00:54:53,120
Speaker 1: have Casey Munchkin come on over and be renamed pac

972
00:54:53,120 --> 00:54:57,879
Speaker 1: Man for the at and yeah, and also here's something

973
00:54:57,920 --> 00:55:02,279
Speaker 1: else those I'm kind of curious about. So we we

974
00:55:02,520 --> 00:55:06,319
Speaker 1: established in the Asteroids versus Meteor's case, the court had

975
00:55:06,360 --> 00:55:11,000
Speaker 1: decided that the expression of the idea was limited to

976
00:55:12,000 --> 00:55:15,400
Speaker 1: the version that was in both games, and that therefore

977
00:55:15,840 --> 00:55:19,479
Speaker 1: the copyright claim did not hold up, or at least

978
00:55:19,480 --> 00:55:22,600
Speaker 1: did not. It wasn't an infringement because the expression was

979
00:55:22,719 --> 00:55:26,120
Speaker 1: limited by what we could do, and that in the

980
00:55:26,160 --> 00:55:30,560
Speaker 1: pac Man versus the Casey Munchkin one, it was different

981
00:55:30,560 --> 00:55:33,080
Speaker 1: in that the expression of the idea could have taken

982
00:55:33,440 --> 00:55:37,760
Speaker 1: different forms, as evidenced by these other Maze Chase games,

983
00:55:38,360 --> 00:55:43,440
Speaker 1: and therefore the claim of copyright infringement was valid. What

984
00:55:43,560 --> 00:55:47,320
Speaker 1: I wonder is that if there had been a game,

985
00:55:47,640 --> 00:55:52,120
Speaker 1: no matter how primitive, that had a similar premise to Asteroids,

986
00:55:52,160 --> 00:55:56,120
Speaker 1: and that you are commanding a spaceship through an asteroid belt,

987
00:55:56,560 --> 00:55:59,560
Speaker 1: and there are also enemy spaceships, and you have to

988
00:55:59,600 --> 00:56:02,759
Speaker 1: avoid both the asteroids and the enemies. But it was

989
00:56:02,800 --> 00:56:06,560
Speaker 1: in a different a different style, like let's say it

990
00:56:06,680 --> 00:56:10,640
Speaker 1: isn't that first person view where you're inside a cockpit

991
00:56:10,760 --> 00:56:13,560
Speaker 1: and you're seeing the asteroids from the point of view

992
00:56:13,680 --> 00:56:17,360
Speaker 1: of the spaceship, and maybe you have some other elements

993
00:56:17,360 --> 00:56:20,080
Speaker 1: in the game that can alert you if if another

994
00:56:20,640 --> 00:56:25,200
Speaker 1: craft is either approaching you or there's a an asteroid

995
00:56:25,200 --> 00:56:27,360
Speaker 1: that's heading towards you, so that you can maneuver the

996
00:56:27,360 --> 00:56:29,839
Speaker 1: ship out of the way and turn and fire on it.

997
00:56:30,200 --> 00:56:32,439
Speaker 1: If that had been the case, then the court would

998
00:56:32,520 --> 00:56:36,360
Speaker 1: be able to say, well, wait this, these two games

999
00:56:36,640 --> 00:56:40,399
Speaker 1: have the same basic premise of navigating a ship through

1000
00:56:40,480 --> 00:56:44,480
Speaker 1: asteroids firing an enemy spacecraft, but have two very different

1001
00:56:44,560 --> 00:56:48,600
Speaker 1: means of expression. In that case, I would imagine the

1002
00:56:48,600 --> 00:56:51,719
Speaker 1: court would have had to have found Meteors guilty of

1003
00:56:51,760 --> 00:56:57,720
Speaker 1: copyright infringement. Maybe not. And if Meteors is if okay,

1004
00:56:57,760 --> 00:57:00,000
Speaker 1: there's how many different ways you can you show it?

1005
00:57:00,000 --> 00:57:02,120
Speaker 1: You're saying the first person version. If you go first person,

1006
00:57:02,600 --> 00:57:04,799
Speaker 1: you still have a field of rocks coming at you,

1007
00:57:05,000 --> 00:57:06,879
Speaker 1: be yours asteroids whatever you want to call them, space

1008
00:57:06,920 --> 00:57:09,719
Speaker 1: debris still coming at you. So you can even see

1009
00:57:09,760 --> 00:57:12,040
Speaker 1: these two games is fictional game we're making up now

1010
00:57:12,560 --> 00:57:15,520
Speaker 1: that one could be sued based on the concept of, Hey,

1011
00:57:15,640 --> 00:57:19,000
Speaker 1: you're taking our concept. People are not going to be discriminating.

1012
00:57:19,000 --> 00:57:22,880
Speaker 1: You're you're in a field. You're taking on asteroids. That's asteroids. Man,

1013
00:57:22,920 --> 00:57:26,439
Speaker 1: you're taking our game. So I'm I don't know if

1014
00:57:26,680 --> 00:57:28,760
Speaker 1: the case would have been decided differently because it's also

1015
00:57:29,480 --> 00:57:32,200
Speaker 1: it's so early. I don't think the court might have

1016
00:57:32,200 --> 00:57:34,680
Speaker 1: had the foresight to even think of a first person

1017
00:57:34,800 --> 00:57:37,640
Speaker 1: experience in general. And you're talking about a primitive version

1018
00:57:37,680 --> 00:57:39,840
Speaker 1: if it if it's so primitive that you have like

1019
00:57:40,480 --> 00:57:44,440
Speaker 1: several lines to depict the cockpit, I'm just thinking, like, like,

1020
00:57:44,480 --> 00:57:47,000
Speaker 1: what star Fox, that's a game that basically is that, right,

1021
00:57:47,000 --> 00:57:49,960
Speaker 1: it's if you're like a primitive star Fox. Would that

1022
00:57:50,040 --> 00:57:52,400
Speaker 1: have worked. I'm just very curious because when I saw

1023
00:57:52,480 --> 00:57:54,680
Speaker 1: this case way back when, the first thing I thought

1024
00:57:54,680 --> 00:57:56,560
Speaker 1: of was Our Type, I don't know if you played

1025
00:57:56,600 --> 00:57:58,720
Speaker 1: Our Type as a game, I'm like, that's like asteroids

1026
00:57:58,840 --> 00:58:02,760
Speaker 1: accept it. So it's roller and they have awesome alien ships,

1027
00:58:03,080 --> 00:58:05,240
Speaker 1: and actually it's kind of the same game. After I

1028
00:58:05,240 --> 00:58:08,240
Speaker 1: started thinking about it, well, yeah, I think, I mean,

1029
00:58:08,400 --> 00:58:11,800
Speaker 1: if you could successfully make the argument of oh, sure,

1030
00:58:11,880 --> 00:58:15,520
Speaker 1: we have the same idea as asteroids, but our version

1031
00:58:15,760 --> 00:58:18,920
Speaker 1: is a completely different expression of that idea than I

1032
00:58:18,960 --> 00:58:23,920
Speaker 1: think you could follow into the category that Meteors ultimately

1033
00:58:23,960 --> 00:58:27,440
Speaker 1: fell into, um that you well, except well no, in

1034
00:58:27,840 --> 00:58:29,480
Speaker 1: that case, actually you would say that you weren't. You

1035
00:58:29,520 --> 00:58:32,480
Speaker 1: weren't infringing upon copyright at all, because you had you

1036
00:58:32,520 --> 00:58:35,000
Speaker 1: had taken you know, you can't copyright that original idea.

1037
00:58:35,160 --> 00:58:37,920
Speaker 1: So therefore, like your expression of that idea and our

1038
00:58:37,920 --> 00:58:41,680
Speaker 1: expression of this idea are so fundamentally different from one

1039
00:58:41,680 --> 00:58:45,080
Speaker 1: another that there's no copyright infringement, that these are two

1040
00:58:45,200 --> 00:58:49,200
Speaker 1: very different game experiences that call upon the same thing.

1041
00:58:49,200 --> 00:58:53,360
Speaker 1: Because otherwise the maze chase games, whichever one came first,

1042
00:58:53,440 --> 00:58:56,320
Speaker 1: would be able to claim copyright infringement on all the others.

1043
00:58:56,360 --> 00:59:00,160
Speaker 1: It wouldn't matter if the design was a call are

1044
00:59:00,200 --> 00:59:03,600
Speaker 1: instead of a gobbler, because you're saying, well, it's the

1045
00:59:03,600 --> 00:59:08,200
Speaker 1: exact same experience. You're you're navigating a piece through a

1046
00:59:08,240 --> 00:59:14,160
Speaker 1: maze being chased down by enemies. I mean, because this

1047
00:59:14,240 --> 00:59:16,040
Speaker 1: is the kind of stuff that drives me nuts about

1048
00:59:16,040 --> 00:59:23,480
Speaker 1: copyright cases because it almost seems arbitrary. Uh, when you

1049
00:59:23,560 --> 00:59:26,360
Speaker 1: go case by case like this and say, well, the

1050
00:59:26,680 --> 00:59:28,920
Speaker 1: logic that's being applied in this one case seems like

1051
00:59:29,000 --> 00:59:31,720
Speaker 1: it's not being applied in this other case. Now, in

1052
00:59:31,760 --> 00:59:34,880
Speaker 1: the ones we've talked about, I understand the perspectives, and

1053
00:59:34,880 --> 00:59:37,680
Speaker 1: I even agree to a certain extent, especially putting myself

1054
00:59:37,760 --> 00:59:40,720
Speaker 1: in the place of the time right and the limitations

1055
00:59:40,720 --> 00:59:43,960
Speaker 1: of the technology, but it still is one of the

1056
00:59:44,040 --> 00:59:47,280
Speaker 1: things that can be a real head scratcher. And ultimately,

1057
00:59:47,400 --> 00:59:50,200
Speaker 1: law is something that people have made, so therefore it

1058
00:59:50,320 --> 00:59:52,960
Speaker 1: is going to have the same sort of limitations and

1059
00:59:53,000 --> 00:59:56,640
Speaker 1: failings as people. Yeah, this has to be applied ad hoc.

1060
00:59:56,840 --> 00:59:58,800
Speaker 1: That's the way this is supposed to be in And

1061
00:59:59,160 --> 01:00:02,120
Speaker 1: I joined you in the in the confusion slash rage.

1062
01:00:02,120 --> 01:00:03,840
Speaker 1: When I first saw this, I was just like, I

1063
01:00:03,880 --> 01:00:06,280
Speaker 1: don't understand how this can be. And the fun thing

1064
01:00:06,360 --> 01:00:09,360
Speaker 1: about law is that you have to make both of

1065
01:00:09,400 --> 01:00:13,840
Speaker 1: these things that seemed completely opposite. You have to somehow

1066
01:00:13,880 --> 01:00:16,680
Speaker 1: harmonize them. When you figure out how to harmonize them,

1067
01:00:16,880 --> 01:00:18,720
Speaker 1: that's how you're building your rules. When it comes to

1068
01:00:18,760 --> 01:00:20,600
Speaker 1: all of this stuff. So the only way this really

1069
01:00:20,600 --> 01:00:24,000
Speaker 1: works is saying, okay, there's These are two different examples

1070
01:00:24,000 --> 01:00:27,800
Speaker 1: of the idea expression unity. Is there an idea expression

1071
01:00:27,880 --> 01:00:31,480
Speaker 1: unity when it comes to meteors? Yes? Is that the

1072
01:00:31,520 --> 01:00:34,520
Speaker 1: case when it comes to pac Man? No? Because this

1073
01:00:34,560 --> 01:00:37,120
Speaker 1: is where the line is. Even though these games looked

1074
01:00:37,240 --> 01:00:40,840
Speaker 1: very different, I thought from just a they called it

1075
01:00:40,920 --> 01:00:43,480
Speaker 1: an ordinary observer point of view. To me, that just

1076
01:00:43,480 --> 01:00:45,240
Speaker 1: seems like any human being to take a look at it.

1077
01:00:45,280 --> 01:00:47,919
Speaker 1: They don't actually want you to dissect things either, which

1078
01:00:47,960 --> 01:00:50,200
Speaker 1: is kind of an interesting idea. If you just looked

1079
01:00:50,240 --> 01:00:52,400
Speaker 1: at them, you wouldn't think Casey Munchkin is the same

1080
01:00:52,440 --> 01:00:54,880
Speaker 1: name as pac Man. It's just it. You wouldn't be

1081
01:00:54,960 --> 01:00:58,200
Speaker 1: that confused. But you would say asteroids and meteors are

1082
01:00:58,200 --> 01:01:01,440
Speaker 1: the same. But this, this is just the way this

1083
01:01:01,480 --> 01:01:05,080
Speaker 1: stuff turned out over time, because otherwise we would never

1084
01:01:05,120 --> 01:01:09,480
Speaker 1: have things like Mario and Sonic and Bunk Like. They're

1085
01:01:09,520 --> 01:01:12,720
Speaker 1: all side scrollers right there, all this this little cute

1086
01:01:12,720 --> 01:01:15,760
Speaker 1: mascot character. They get powered up. They're collecting something of

1087
01:01:15,880 --> 01:01:19,040
Speaker 1: some sort. Once got rings, once got coins. How are

1088
01:01:19,040 --> 01:01:21,240
Speaker 1: they getting about it? Once breaking it with his hand

1089
01:01:21,280 --> 01:01:23,440
Speaker 1: above his head. Another one is breaking it as he

1090
01:01:23,520 --> 01:01:26,400
Speaker 1: spins into a ball. The fact that they're expressed so

1091
01:01:26,480 --> 01:01:29,920
Speaker 1: differently is actually important, because if we don't have that,

1092
01:01:29,960 --> 01:01:31,560
Speaker 1: we would just have a bunch of clone games where

1093
01:01:31,600 --> 01:01:34,360
Speaker 1: they Okay, here's your plumber. I mean, I guess the question.

1094
01:01:34,360 --> 01:01:36,360
Speaker 1: I would love to see that lawsuit of somebody breaking

1095
01:01:36,360 --> 01:01:39,040
Speaker 1: down Super Mario. It's like, okay, how how many ways

1096
01:01:39,080 --> 01:01:45,360
Speaker 1: can you express an avenging plumber? Only one good one?

1097
01:01:46,080 --> 01:01:48,920
Speaker 1: It's the only one good one. But yeah, this was

1098
01:01:49,120 --> 01:01:51,200
Speaker 1: a lot of fun to look into. It was definitely

1099
01:01:51,240 --> 01:01:54,480
Speaker 1: outside of my normal zone. So I gotta thank you

1100
01:01:54,560 --> 01:01:57,280
Speaker 1: I as for for joining me, and not just joining me,

1101
01:01:57,360 --> 01:02:00,920
Speaker 1: but for being the one to suggest these two cases

1102
01:02:00,920 --> 01:02:04,480
Speaker 1: in particular as the subject for this episode, because it

1103
01:02:04,480 --> 01:02:07,480
Speaker 1: turned out to be a really fascinating kind of discussion,

1104
01:02:07,560 --> 01:02:12,800
Speaker 1: both of the the legal status of video games and

1105
01:02:13,280 --> 01:02:17,840
Speaker 1: just the weird mind bending logic you have to apply

1106
01:02:17,920 --> 01:02:20,560
Speaker 1: when it comes to copyright. Well, thanks for having me.

1107
01:02:20,600 --> 01:02:23,000
Speaker 1: And I probably was influenced by listening to the HR

1108
01:02:23,200 --> 01:02:25,200
Speaker 1: three partner because I was like, oh, that's the bizarre

1109
01:02:25,360 --> 01:02:27,760
Speaker 1: all right there? Game kind of sucked. Never minded these cases,

1110
01:02:28,080 --> 01:02:30,600
Speaker 1: the two cases that drove me insane. Here they are

1111
01:02:30,640 --> 01:02:34,560
Speaker 1: and they brought it back, these these these horrible ideas.

1112
01:02:35,040 --> 01:02:36,480
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why I never went into

1113
01:02:36,640 --> 01:02:40,360
Speaker 1: intellectual property law as an aside was because of cases

1114
01:02:40,440 --> 01:02:43,400
Speaker 1: like this. It was some of it does seem arbitrary

1115
01:02:43,680 --> 01:02:47,440
Speaker 1: and it could drive a person crazy. So I decided

1116
01:02:47,920 --> 01:02:50,320
Speaker 1: I don't feel like doing that and ended up on

1117
01:02:50,360 --> 01:02:54,720
Speaker 1: this podcast today, and and now here we are. So

1118
01:02:55,240 --> 01:02:58,240
Speaker 1: I as an I plan on doing another episode about

1119
01:02:58,720 --> 01:03:02,280
Speaker 1: a lawsuit in tech, specifically actually a series of lawsuits

1120
01:03:02,960 --> 01:03:06,560
Speaker 1: the the we mentioned it earlier, the Apple Samsung battles,

1121
01:03:07,120 --> 01:03:10,120
Speaker 1: and we were originally going to include that in our

1122
01:03:10,160 --> 01:03:12,840
Speaker 1: discussion today, but then it just it was it became

1123
01:03:12,880 --> 01:03:16,160
Speaker 1: obvious very early on that that would have been we

1124
01:03:16,200 --> 01:03:21,080
Speaker 1: would have been either super truncating all the discussion and

1125
01:03:21,120 --> 01:03:25,120
Speaker 1: thus not really illustrating anything useful, or it would go

1126
01:03:25,160 --> 01:03:27,160
Speaker 1: on so long that it would have had to have

1127
01:03:27,200 --> 01:03:30,360
Speaker 1: been split up into multiple episodes. Anyway, So I AS

1128
01:03:30,440 --> 01:03:33,360
Speaker 1: is going to come back at a later date that

1129
01:03:33,400 --> 01:03:35,560
Speaker 1: we will have to determine when our schedules will allow

1130
01:03:35,640 --> 01:03:37,880
Speaker 1: us to do this again. Uh, and what we will

1131
01:03:37,880 --> 01:03:40,040
Speaker 1: talk about that We've already started the notes on that,

1132
01:03:40,160 --> 01:03:43,880
Speaker 1: so they the I guess the way of depending on

1133
01:03:43,920 --> 01:03:46,600
Speaker 1: how you look at it. The nice thing about that

1134
01:03:46,720 --> 01:03:53,680
Speaker 1: story is it's still developing from the from now. It's

1135
01:03:53,680 --> 01:03:56,400
Speaker 1: an ongoing war that and the funny thing about it

1136
01:03:56,440 --> 01:03:58,560
Speaker 1: is still as an aside is the fact that they

1137
01:03:58,640 --> 01:04:03,040
Speaker 1: are partners in a number of ventures when it comes

1138
01:04:03,080 --> 01:04:07,200
Speaker 1: to components inside of iPhones, of Apple devices, etcetera. The

1139
01:04:07,240 --> 01:04:10,240
Speaker 1: fact that Samsung is their partner in some degrees, and

1140
01:04:10,280 --> 01:04:13,040
Speaker 1: also they're stabbing their partner. It's just a very strange

1141
01:04:13,040 --> 01:04:15,520
Speaker 1: concept of like, hey, I love you, now let me

1142
01:04:15,600 --> 01:04:17,800
Speaker 1: kill you. It's what they both are doing. Yeah, and

1143
01:04:17,800 --> 01:04:21,040
Speaker 1: and they're they're fairly recent developments on that front as well,

1144
01:04:21,080 --> 01:04:26,640
Speaker 1: with Apple looking into potential other microchip processors that kind

1145
01:04:26,680 --> 01:04:30,800
Speaker 1: of are are manufacturers rather and and other component manufacturers

1146
01:04:31,160 --> 01:04:33,920
Speaker 1: and kind of getting away from some of the Samsung stuff.

1147
01:04:34,440 --> 01:04:37,880
Speaker 1: So that I'm sure that has no I'm sure it

1148
01:04:37,920 --> 01:04:41,120
Speaker 1: has to do with a lot of different factors, one

1149
01:04:41,120 --> 01:04:44,800
Speaker 1: of them being the massive number of lawsuits between the two.

1150
01:04:45,040 --> 01:04:46,920
Speaker 1: So we will talk about that at a on a

1151
01:04:46,960 --> 01:04:50,560
Speaker 1: future episode of tech Stuff. I as thank you once

1152
01:04:50,600 --> 01:04:54,520
Speaker 1: again for joining me. Where can people find your stuff?

1153
01:04:55,120 --> 01:04:58,000
Speaker 1: You can find my stuff easiest is on Twitter, Twitter

1154
01:04:58,040 --> 01:05:00,360
Speaker 1: dot com slash I S. That's I y a Zy.

1155
01:05:01,120 --> 01:05:03,640
Speaker 1: I'm not the singer that is at I S Live.

1156
01:05:04,240 --> 01:05:06,439
Speaker 1: If you want to go find him. You can also

1157
01:05:06,480 --> 01:05:08,080
Speaker 1: find my work at seen dot dot com. I'm doing

1158
01:05:08,120 --> 01:05:10,120
Speaker 1: a couple of shows here. I also do a fun

1159
01:05:10,200 --> 01:05:14,160
Speaker 1: show with Jonathan Strickland and Eric Sandean called Podcast Without Pretense,

1160
01:05:14,160 --> 01:05:17,640
Speaker 1: available at GQ network dot com. So I'm everywhere, and

1161
01:05:17,720 --> 01:05:20,280
Speaker 1: it's so fun to be a part of this show

1162
01:05:20,320 --> 01:05:24,280
Speaker 1: again because this was a trip down memory lane. Yeah yeah,

1163
01:05:24,360 --> 01:05:28,000
Speaker 1: and it'll help make up for how painful the Samsung

1164
01:05:28,040 --> 01:05:31,040
Speaker 1: Apple one will be because that's just a I mean,

1165
01:05:31,160 --> 01:05:33,520
Speaker 1: there's just a whole bunch of good old fashioned hayte

1166
01:05:33,520 --> 01:05:36,880
Speaker 1: in that episode. Well, guys, if you want to get

1167
01:05:36,920 --> 01:05:40,160
Speaker 1: in touch with me and suggest future topics for episodes,

1168
01:05:40,560 --> 01:05:44,280
Speaker 1: or even a guest host or someone I should interview,

1169
01:05:45,000 --> 01:05:48,000
Speaker 1: please drop me a line let me know what you think.

1170
01:05:48,240 --> 01:05:51,840
Speaker 1: The address is tech stuff at how stuff Works dot com,

1171
01:05:51,960 --> 01:05:54,640
Speaker 1: or you can send me a message on Twitter or

1172
01:05:54,720 --> 01:05:57,280
Speaker 1: Facebook or Tumbler. They handled all three of those. Is

1173
01:05:57,360 --> 01:06:00,480
Speaker 1: text stuff h s W and we you will talk

1174
01:06:00,480 --> 01:06:09,600
Speaker 1: to you again really soon for more on this and

1175
01:06:09,640 --> 01:06:12,240
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Because at how Stuff Works dot

1176
01:06:12,240 --> 01:06:21,800
Speaker 1: com