The Tetris Company
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The Tetris Company LLC, aka TTC, is based in Hawaii and is managed by Henk Rogers. The company currently owns the trademark to the game Tetris, originally conceived by Alexey Pajitnov. Tetris is widely considered one of the most popular games ever released, which is reflected by its mobile edition being the top seller in the industry.[1] . The company licenses the Tetris trademark to video game development companies and maintains a set of guidelines that each licensed game must meet.[1]
TTC drew attention in the late 90s when it attempted to remove every freeware and shareware version of Tetris from the market by sending out cease-and-desist letters claiming both trademark and copyright infringement.[2] Creators of Tetris clones determined that the company has no valid legal basis to claim rights to any tetromino game that does not infringe on the Tetris name trademark, since copyright "look-and-feel" suits have not stood up in court in the past (Lotus v. Borland), and because the letters made no patent claims. [3]
In August 2008, Apple Inc. removed Tris, a version of Tetris from its online App Store. The software author had written a tetromino game for the iPhone OS without any authorization from The Tetris Company.[4] In March 2009, The Tetris Company sued BioSocia, operator of the Omgpop gaming portal.[5][dead link][6] because one of its multiplayer games, Blockles, was too similar to tetris. By September 2009, Omgpop removed the game from the website and replaced it with an alternate that the developers created, based on Puyo Puyo.
[edit] External links
- The Tetris Company, LLC.
- Blue Planet Software, 50 percent owner and the representative of The Tetris Company
[edit] References
- ^ Tetris from the Top
- ^ Andrew James Bednarz, December 24th 1997 The Tetris Company Story
- ^ Bjorn Stenberg A trademark cease-and-desist for Rockbox's Tetrox: Tetrox renamed to Rockblox, for trademark reasons. September 19, 2006. Retrieved on September 5, 2009.
- ^ iPhone Tetris Clone 'Tris' Pulled From App Store on Kotaku
- ^ Ross Dannenberg. Patent Arcade: New Case: Tetris Co. v. BioSocia, Inc. (S.D.N.Y) [Copyright] Retrieved on September 5, 2009.
- ^ Information about Tetris vs. Biosocia Inc. Retrieved on December 28, 2009.
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