On Tuesday, May 01, 2007 12:50 am Wart wrote: > It was recently brought to my attention[1] that the bsd-games package > contains 'tetris-bsd', a curses-based tetris clone. This was an > oversight on my part, because if I had paid closer attention during the > review I would have stripped the name 'tetris' and replaced it with > something less objectionable. Now that I know, I'll do that anyway. > > But the bug report is claiming that all tetris clones are illegal and > should be removed, not just the name 'tetris'. What is the legal status > of tetris (and other game) clones? Can we get some "official" word from > a legal department on what is and isn't allowed? > > --Wart > [1]https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=238526 IANAL, but it is generally not possible to claim copyright over a game, so only the title would be in a state of legal violation (as the term Tetris is a registered trademark).

As long as the game doesn't use the "Tetris" trademark to describe itself, the game is fine.

On Tue, May 01, 2007 at 08:28:17AM -0500, Tom spot Callaway wrote: > > should be removed, not just the name 'tetris'. What is the legal status > > of tetris (and other game) clones? Can we get some "official" word from > > a legal department on what is and isn't allowed? > > As long as the game doesn't use the "Tetris" trademark to describe > itself, the game is fine. Tetris is one to be very careful about as the Tetris company have a reputation for causing legal trouble.

Unfortunately it seems that RMS already said he doesn't think there is a problem: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-01/msg00916.html On the other hand the other discussion in that thread seems a bit inconclusive as well... as in, perhaps renaming the menu item and the buffer name "Tetris" to "Falling Blocks Wink Wink" might be sufficient.