[game_preservation] 1974 Atari memo by Jobs

[John Andersen]

Thanks for the information guys, it really does help clarify some speculation that was written up and I remember reading years ago (but never confirmed or sourced).  Fascinating stuff Martin, thanks so much for that insight.  It appears the coin-op arcade version of Arkanoid was distributed through a deal Taito America made with Romstar in the U.S.  Atari Interactive was cracking down on iPhone Breakout clones in 2008 apparently.  
Just even reading about Atari Corporation and Atari Games - then reading about Namco's ownership of Atari Games around that same time period Arkanoid came out - it's very confusing.  Devin, your Hideyuki Nakajima memorial write-up was great btw, a really interesting character.  I'm still trying to figure out the time frame when Namco purchased shares of Data East Corporation and then sold them off to Sega near or around that time period as well - i'm looking into that at the moment.
- John 

CC: game_preservation at igda.org
From: wgungfu at gmail.com
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2013 22:05:53 -0600
To: game_preservation at igda.org
Subject: Re: [game_preservation] 1974 Atari memo by Jobs

All good points. Atari never copyrighted the audio-visuals of the coin-op version of Breakout, just the name. Additionally, for half of it (the ball and bat), they would have had a problem for the same reasons they couldn't copyright the AV of PONG. Those were already provided in Baer and company's patents - the same ones Atari licensed in '76. That would have just left rows of blocks to argue about, which would be even harder to provide any evidence of unique visual qualities.
As for Arkanoid, by the time that was out Atari Inc. was gone and you had Atari Corporation and Atari Games. If anyone would have launched a suit it would have been Atari Games, but besides the problems mentioned above there was also the fact they didn't own the rights to the Breakout name (all copyrights and trademarks to Atari Inc.'s  game names went to Atari Corporation).
Regardless, coin lawsuits of the time period were much more successful when based on copying of code (illegal clones) vs. "inspired by" games. For example, look at the suit of Atari Inc. vs. Amusement World (which Ian Bogost most recently brought public attention to) where they lost the case even though the game was clearly based on the same basic concept. That's in contrast to clones of Centipede and other games where Atari was able to prove their code was used in production of the game (even if as in some cases minor changes were done in the graphics). In Centipede's case, Ed Logg put morse code in the game that literally stated "COPYRIGHT 1980 ATARI." It looked like random junk bytes to anyone looking through the code.

-Marty
Sent from my iPad


On Feb 13, 2013, at 9:19 PM, Devin Monnens <dmonnens at gmail.com> wrote:

Well, Arkanoid was 10 years later, and Atari wasn't as powerful as it was in the 70s. It also has a lot of power-ups and enemies, so it's not just a blockbusting game (or rather, it puts a twist on the genre). So I think there wouldn't be much of a case as the gameplay is significantly different that it's not a Breakout clone. But it would be interesting to see if any complaints were lodged.


On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 10:00 PM, John Andersen <gamerep at hotmail.com> wrote:




Regarding Breakout and Super Breakout, did Atari ever have any type of legal dispute with Taito regarding their creation of Arkanoid in 1986?  Martin, could you shed any light on this?  Different Arkanoid websites list the game as being "based upon" or "inspired by" by Breakout, but I really can't find anything concrete if Atari had a problem with Arkanoid.

- John Andersen 		 	   		  

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Devin Monnens
www.deserthat.com

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