Public domain games on this site

[Union of Soviets]

Here must be careful.I saw two problematic game in legality, first Paku Paku which Namco Bandai can banned as unauthorised Pac Man clone, and other is Jumpman Lives!
I explained about Pac Man clones, and also learned that rules can't be copyrighted,but here we have Pac Man characters, Pac and ghosts which are protected so that game could be problem.
Jumpman Lives! was illegal game which was made by Apogee and Apogee stopped production of that game after request of Epyix which only had rights on it in 1991.Similar situation as when Magnussoft was producing Zeta as BeOS clone, and after letter of cease and desist Magnussoft stopped to make new Zeta copies, but sold copies are now illegal.
After dissolution of Epyix as I know, rights on that game only has Randy Glover, and only he can give permission to any site make available for free download Jumpman Lives! as Jumpman free clone.After his permission this game can be freeware, free open source, public domain blah,blah...Until that that game is illegal since 1991.
I saw that you respect copyright law, yes you didn't have probles for those games because they are so small and so old, so their owners don't carry much on them, but to save your soul in legal interest, think about this.
Regards

[Union of Soviets]

News! Randy Glover gave permission for Jumpman's clones.So we now legalized this game, but notice that Jumpman Lives! is free open source Randy Glover's Jumpman's clone.

[MrFlibble]

Thanks for the info!

I've moved the topic into the "Site recommendations" forum.

[DOSGuy]

Hi Union of Soviets.

The story of Jumpman Lives! is that Apogee assumed that they could make a Jumpman clone, but Epyx sent them a cease and desist letter, so they immediately stopped selling it and abandoned all rights to it. Because Apogee didn't defend themselves in court, a legal ruling was never made as to whether or not Jumpman Lives! was legal. That means that we have only Epyx's opinion that Jumpman Lives! was illegal. Had Apogee defended themselves in court, they might have prevailed. A certain amount of imitation may be legal, but using a trademarked name certainly wouldn't be, so Epyx probably would have won their case, but we'll never know. As you mentioned, the rights to Jumpman reverted to Randy Glover in 1993, so if he's cool with Jumpman clones, then there is neither a legal nor moral issue.

Paku Paku doesn't use a trademarked name, so the question is whether or not the game is too similar to Pac-Man. Atari successfully sued Phillips over the similarity between K.C. Munchkin and Pac-Man in 1982 but, since then, thousands of Pac-Man clones have been created. It would be impossible for Namco or Atari or anyone else to sue all of the Pac-Man clones, but there are so many "clones" of so many games that I think it's been established that a certain amount of imitation is legal. Now then, I suspect that the makers of most clones of classic games don't get sued because they generate too little revenue to be worth suing (which would certainly be the case for Paku Paku, a freeware game). In general, I try not to put direct clones of games on this site. I will add games that are similar -- let's face it, every game rips off some other game at this point -- but I don't add games that have attempted to create perfect copies of some other copyrighted game. Paku Paku is the only exception.

Having never been successfully sued, it is not currently illegal to distribute Paku Paku. Would Namco be successful if they sued? That would only be speculation. Since most clones have never been sued, all of those games are technically "legal until proven illegal" but, as you say, there is the moral issue. I have steered clear of every game that I knew was attempting to perfectly reproduce a copyrighted game, so what makes Paku Paku special? Jason has been clear that he has attempted to perfectly replicate the rules of Pac-Man: the scoring, the monster behavior, etc. Paku Paku, however, contains no copyrighted graphics or sounds ripped from any other game. The 160x120 effective graphics mean that the characters and objects in the game can't perfectly replicate the graphics in any official version of Pac-Man. Besides being technically legal, I personally feel that Paku Paku is morally allowable because it contains no copyrighted material, abuses no trademarks, and has distinctly different graphics that I consider novel. Paku Paku is, believe it or not, a text-based game! Or at least, it uses a text mode to create images that look like graphics, but those graphics are clearly lower resolution than the original (which was triple the resolution at 224x288!), which gives the game a distinctive look and feel. I don't struggle with my conscience over Paku Paku, and I think it's a remarkable technical achievement that ought to be shared with the world.

Reasonable people may have different opinions on this matter, and I value yours. Please feel free to reply!

[MrFlibble]

Luckily those legal issues are never pushed to the extremes, otherwise the old Duke Nukem games would have to go because of all the "borrowed" content.

[Union of Soviets]

Hi Union of Soviets.

The story of Jumpman Lives! is that Apogee assumed that they could make a Jumpman clone, but Epyx sent them a cease and desist letter, so they immediately stopped selling it and abandoned all rights to it. Because Apogee didn't defend themselves in court, a legal ruling was never made as to whether or not Jumpman Lives! was legal. That means that we have only Epyx's opinion that Jumpman Lives! was illegal. Had Apogee defended themselves in court, they might have prevailed. A certain amount of imitation may be legal, but using a trademarked name certainly wouldn't be, so Epyx probably would have won their case, but we'll never know. As you mentioned, the rights to Jumpman reverted to Randy Glover in 1993, so if he's cool with Jumpman clones, then there is neither a legal nor moral issue.

Paku Paku doesn't use a trademarked name, so the question is whether or not the game is too similar to Pac-Man. Atari successfully sued Phillips over the similarity between K.C. Munchkin and Pac-Man in 1982 but, since then, thousands of Pac-Man clones have been created. It would be impossible for Namco or Atari or anyone else to sue all of the Pac-Man clones, but there are so many "clones" of so many games that I think it's been established that a certain amount of imitation is legal. Now then, I suspect that the makers of most clones of classic games don't get sued because they generate too little revenue to be worth suing (which would certainly be the case for Paku Paku, a freeware game). In general, I try not to put direct clones of games on this site. I will add games that are similar -- let's face it, every game rips off some other game at this point -- but I don't add games that have attempted to create perfect copies of some other copyrighted game. Paku Paku is the only exception.

Having never been successfully sued, it is not currently illegal to distribute Paku Paku. Would Namco be successful if they sued? That would only be speculation. Since most clones have never been sued, all of those games are technically "legal until proven illegal" but, as you say, there is the moral issue. I have steered clear of every game that I knew was attempting to perfectly reproduce a copyrighted game, so what makes Paku Paku special? Jason has been clear that he has attempted to perfectly replicate the rules of Pac-Man: the scoring, the monster behavior, etc. Paku Paku, however, contains no copyrighted graphics or sounds ripped from any other game. The 160x120 effective graphics mean that the characters and objects in the game can't perfectly replicate the graphics in any official version of Pac-Man. Besides being technically legal, I personally feel that Paku Paku is morally allowable because it contains no copyrighted material, abuses no trademarks, and has distinctly different graphics that I consider novel. Paku Paku is, believe it or not, a text-based game! Or at least, it uses a text mode to create images that look like graphics, but those graphics are clearly lower resolution than the original (which was triple the resolution at 224x288!), which gives the game a distinctive look and feel. I don't struggle with my conscience over Paku Paku, and I think it's a remarkable technical achievement that ought to be shared with the world.

Reasonable people may have different opinions on this matter, and I value yours. Please feel free to reply!

For creator of Paku Paku I could say- dont steal things of other games, that are obviously ripped off.
just dont steal. be original ok?
Making a game strongly based on for example Mario but not calling it that and not actually using any assets from a Mario game is usually IP copyright infringement, unless you can prove that you're using it under the fair use clause, such as in satire.
Again, generally completely illegal, and commercial/non-commercial makes no difference.
What is so hard about creating your own models, your own artwork?
A skilled artist can create their own style of art, their own style of models.
Some artists , they only know how to do Pokemon, Mario, Mortal Kombat, artwork, because that was only what they have been doing for the past 5 years, for free and unpaid work, for persons who promises them money after project is completed. Then they get terminated and look for another person making clones.
Legality of something doesn't depend of court's result.
Yes DOSGuy I understand you.I didn't know whole story of Apogee vs Epyx.But Apogee stopped with production because real lawful dangerous and real reasons which Epyx could use on court.
In 1993, yes rights reverted to Mr Glover.
In BeOS-Zeta affair, with legal troubles about source code of BeOS, when Magnussoft stopped ZETA after cease and desist letter by ACCESS Co., they on that way finished that situation without court. I asked one very good IP professor about my rights on ZETA OS copy, because there are any court result between Magnussoft and ACCESS Co., he sayed to me- ZETA now is not legal, they finished it without court.Magnussoft with that act on some way said YES ZETA IS ILLEGAL, so I as third person only can respect that decision.My copy of ZETA is not legal, so I maybe only can sue Magnussoft for repair of damage because I must stopped used it because I am person who respect law.If I continue to use illegal ZETA, ACCESS could be theoretically sue me, but that's science fiction.
I asked 32bits company from Croatia about one their quiz game, but old old version for DOS, about its circulation on internet. 32bits say that they can sue people who use it on own computers, sue people who upload on internet but wait, which not mean that copying of that game is legal. Also they said to me that they probably wouldn't sue people who use it on own computers on which have rights to sue, but have own reasons.That doesn't mean that is because no sue legal. Lawyers are expensive, old game now cost 5$, court is expensive, so starting of process is expensive.Result could be positive, but what if it was long, sued part died in process,or after all he/she now so poor so can't pay anything.Because illegal game, game's legal owner has big damage what is apsurde.
For us, little users respect of copyright is more moral than legal responsibility.
Regards

[DOSGuy]

Things aren't always clear cut. Distributing a game without the author's permission is clearly illegal. That's why I only put games on the site if there is a license that permits their distribution. Copyright infringement is a matter of opinion. Company A may have a hit game and discover that two other companies are selling a similar game. They sue both companies in court, winning one case and losing the other. How did that happen? The judge in the second case felt that the game was original enough to not violate any of Company A's intellectual property. Every game resembles other games, so a court has to make a determination as to whether the extent of the similarities is sufficient to conclude that Company A's intellectual property rights have been violated. The extent to which a court will require any game to be original varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and even from judge to judge within the same jurisdiction. It's the same with other types of art. How similar can one song be to another? How similar can one logo be to another? Try the case in front of two different judges and you could get two different verdicts. While the judgement must be informed by the legal code and legal precedent, the interpretation is ultimately the judge's opinion, and opinions are unique to the individual and vary through the course of the individual's life.

Things like copying images, sound or code are clear cut. If you create a game using 100% original code, graphics and sounds, then you have only the opinion of the copyright holder that the work is too similar to his own. The sad reality is that it creates a gray area for copycat games where someone might feel that they represent copyright infringement, but there's no guarantee that a court will agree. I'm morally opposed to copycat games, which is why I don't host games that are simply attempting to clone an existing game to the maximum extent possible. Candy Crush Saga clearly rips off Bejewelled, but it's different enough that Popcap has never successfully sued them. Words with Friends clearly rips off Scrabble, but it's different enough that Mattel/Hasbro has never successfully sued them. The rules of both games are slightly different (the result of matching four or five of the same color in the former, or the placement of the double/triple letter/word scores and letter values in the latter, for instance), so they meet the requirement to be somewhat original. Paku Paku attempts to copy the rules and behavior of Pac-Man, so I admit that it's not very original. The graphics are novel, but there are clearly significant similarities. There's still no guarantee that Namco would be able to prove copyright infringement if they were try the case in court. Because copyright infringement (and patent infringement) is a matter of opinion, and because the threshold for a finding of guilt varies with the passage of time, no one can ever know what a court will decide without trying. Justice Potter Stewart famously stated that he couldn't define hard-core pornography, "But I know it when I see it". Since there is no metric nor calculation to determine if one work of art is too similar to another, every judge must apply the "I know it when I see (or hear) it" test on a case by case basis.

Paku Paku is legal to distribute until a court anywhere on Earth says otherwise. I wouldn't normally put a game this similar to another copyrighted game on the site for moral reasons. If the owner of Paku Paku was trying to sell it, it would not have made the cut. Because the creator of Paku Paku is not profiting from the game, has released the game and source code into the public domain, because Namco is unlikely to suffer any financial losses as a result of the existence of Paku Paku, and because the game shows off a novel technological achievement which includes unique (and inferior) graphics compared to the original game, I am willing to play the "legal until proven illegal" card in this case. I have moral as well as legal obligations, of course, but I think Paku Paku is something special that contributes something positive to the world and to the craft. That a game can be made in 2011 that has 16 color (pseudo-)graphics and sound can be played on a 1981 IBM PC Model 5150 is, frankly, inspiring. So, what was Jason Knight's intention when he created Paku Paku? To profit from cloning a popular copyrighted game, or to use an existing game as the template for a technical achievement and a work of art? My "I know it when I see it" test tells me that copyright infringement wasn't the goal; the goal was to create a work of art, and Pac-Man happened to be the subject. Andy Warhol never asked Campbell's permission to make the Campbell's Soup Cans paintings, by the way. Art receives a certain amount of protection from the First Amendment's freedom of expression provisions, and computer code can be art. According to the Andy Warhol Foundation:

Andy Warhol did not originally seek permission from Campbell Soup Company to paint their soup cans. He apparently did not run into problems with the company who saw his usage as amusing and the freedom of expression.

It was only after Warhol's death, when the Andy Warhol Foundation began making licensing agreements with various manufacturers to use Warhol's imagery on products, that there was an official legal agreement between the Andy Warhol Foundation and Campbell Soup Company. Presently, both parties own a stake in the copyright and neither party can make licensing agreements without the other party's permission. Happily, we have a good relationship with them and are involved in various licensing deals with them covering a wide range of products.

So, to answer your question, while he was alive, Warhol did retain the copyright to his own artworks but never addressed the issue himself as far as Campbell Soup Company was concerned.

In this case as well, I suspect that Namco will have no objection to Paku Paku unless Mr. Knight attempts to license or sell products related to the game. I further suspect that the Andy Warhol Foundation might have won if they had chosen to contest Campbell's demand for joint copyright of the works, but the case was never tried, so no legal precedent was established. The limits of freedom of expression are debatable, and bound to be interpreted differently in different eras. Like so much of life, it's a gray area. I won't play the "legal until proven illegal" card for a clone that brings little unique value to the table, but I find that Paku Paku has merit that inclines me to give it an assumption of legality until that assumption is tested in court.

[MrFlibble]

DOSGuy, now we're talking about this subject, what's your opinion on Super Angelo?

[deathshadow]

Could someone translate the OP's post into ENGLISH for me? I can't figure out what the blue blazes he's even trying to say with that yoda-esque post.

Though I'm slightly more towards legal than most would think -- the only thing that might actually bite me is the music; see... I didn't actually use any of the original graphics and instead drew my own. It is NOT an actual 1:1 implementation of the game logic or original code, and is instead a clean-room implementation based on a third parties explanation of it. (same excuse that left IBM toothless against clone BIOS)... In fact the 3:8 ratio change required massive differences in game logic; even if the user impression is much the same.

But, here's the laugh... I can use prior art as a defense; there are sufficient Pac-man clones and ripoffs that were never prosecuted the past three decades; failure to defend your property can in fact be used (and there's precedent for this) as a method of saying the rights to it are now null and void. (which is why the GPL is bigger than the founding documents of most nations) -- or worse, legal bias. Again, one of the big tenets of law is for it to apply to anyone, it must apply equally to everyone. Though admittedly the jacktards running the EU have no clue what that even means... see their repeated suits against M$ in the previous decade where it wasn't OK for M$ to do certain things, but it was OK for everyone else.

... and of course I'm doing this 'not for profit'; they have to prove damages and given the target platforms they would actually have to prove that I've made them lose money on the official versions for the two platforms I've released it for... of which I'm pretty certain nobody has bought new from them in at least two decades.

That last one is the best defense of all; proof of damages could in fact result in them kicked out of court with a frivolous civil suit charge (now a felony in some venues) and slapped with a counter-suit for damages that could result in being far more of a drain on their resources than they ever "lost" from this clone for platforms they don't make money on anymore.

Though as I said on the site, I could always turn it into a KC Munchkin clone instead...

[MrFlibble]

Could someone translate the OP's post into ENGLISH for me? I can't figure out what the blue blazes he's even trying to say with that yoda-esque post.

While I respect your opinion as the author of the game, would you also please respect the right of the users who are not native speakers of English to express themselves in this board? I'm saying this because your remark quoted above could be viewed as derogatory, and it is certainly not neutral in tone.

Thank you for your understanding.

[DOSGuy]

deathshadow (Paku Paku's author) mentioned clean room reverse engineering, which has been established to be legal. IBM "clones" were possible because someone reproduced the functionality of the IBM PC BIOS without having any knowledge of the code. Basically, it's legal to reproduce functionality as long as the code is entirely your own. This makes it legal for Wine to create a Linux implementation of the Windows API, for instance. You can clone functionality without violating copyright. Since Paku Paku's author hasn't seen any of Namco's code, he hasn't violated their copyright on that code. He also hasn't directly used any copyrighted graphics or sounds, or any trademarked names, so I think the game's legality is pretty unambiguous.

Wiering Software stopped selling Super Angelo for fear of legal repercussions, but I don't think they actually received a cease and desist order. As far as I know, Super Angelo uses no copyrighted code, graphics or sounds. The characters strongly resemble characters from various Mario games, which was probably a bad idea, but the levels and some of the gameplay elements are clearly original. It's not a clone of any specific game. As I said, I'm morally opposed to games that attempt to profit from copycat games -- which I don't think I would classify Super Angelo as being -- but Wiering Software no longer sells Super Angelo, so there's no longer any issue of profiting from the similarity to another company's work. I don't have a problem with Trek Trivia and Next Generation Trivia for the same reason. It's not a sure thing that Paramount would have won their case if Apogee could have afforded to fight them. Trivia is just information; Encyclopedia Britannica, Trivial Pursuit and Jeopardy! don't need permission to include information in their products about Coca-Cola, though the difference is that they contain a wide variety of information, whereas the Trek Trivia games were dedicated exclusively to Star Trek. Anyway, the games were never found to infringe any of Paramount's copyrights or trademarks, and no one is attempting to profit from the games any more. If Paramount is satisfied with the situation, so am I.

[Union of Soviets]

I am sorry on not good English, I am from East Europe and I am not in job with someone abroad, so I don't use English everyday.
I said my opinion, you said yours.No problem.
I have more original Pac-man clone, from far 1982, made by KMZ Soft, ex-Soviet Union, named PC Man.
But it also use Namco's names of ghosts, so for that I also think that is attack (but small) on copyright.
Game is freeware. If you are interesting for it, I can send.
It works fine under DOSBox...