Curious about copyright laws internationally

nozzferrahhtoo

So I am in MANY (most?) areas of law a complete and total lay man. And usually I am not all that interest in law itself, and limit myself to discussions of a moral and philosophical nature that might be "behind" laws.

So I am a know nothing in other words

But I had my interest in copyright law sparked by a computer game last night and wondered what opinion / knowledge here would be on it.

So most people here would be aware of the game, and it's massive success, called "Pokemon GO". PGO for short henceforth.

This week another game, released a few weeks ago, came to media attention because Niantic (the creators of PGO) lodged some form of formal copyright complaint against it.

The game called Draconius GO (h.f DGO) I installed myself last night and to say that the rules, goals, User Interfaces, layouts and mechanics of the game are IDENTICAL to PGO would be an understatement. It is pretty much the first game with a new "skin" on it.

DGO however claim they wrote every line of code from scratch, and added elements to the game PGO lacks. (Both of these claims appear to be true, but the new elements are few and not striking so the strength of their claim seems to be predominantly that all the code is original).

So how is this likely to pan out legally? What precedent is there. I am semi-aware of something around computer BIOS systems called the "Chinese Wall" where a company, I think IBM, sued another company for something similar. They produced an absolutely identical product albeit in completely original code. And, if memory serves, the attempt to sue failed.

lifeandtimes

If you build a restaurant brick by brick and call it McDonnells but is similar in every way to a McDonald's but with a cowboy instead of a clown it's still breach of copyright and trademark as it is too similar and people could totally confuse the two restaurants.

In saying that though with this particular case it sounds like they have created a game that although like for like isn't something people would confuse with the origins Pokemon go.

I'm not familiar with this particular case so in not sure how the lawsuit didn't win for the pokemon go creaters. There's probably be more to it like maybe the creatures and terrain in the game were vastly different and in no way could be confused with the original.

Lool at things like Lord of the rings and game of thrones. Similar but not the same.

nozzferrahhtoo

lifeandtimes wrote: »

I'm not familiar with this particular case so in not sure how the lawsuit didn't win for the pokemon go creaters.

Perhaps I am mis-reading you here, or you mis-read me but the lawsuit has not happened yet.

I was looking for opinions on how people would expect it to go if they pursue one.

I think at this time nothing more has happened than the PGO creators have lodged some kind of formal complaint against the DGO creators.

So rather than wait impatiently to see how it pans out from here, I was hoping to get some foresight from you guys here

Perhaps my including a link in the OP would have been more helpful.

Victor

One needs to separate the copyright on the computer code from the copyright on the game mechanism.