There has always been a person who
sues other people and go to court. In the video game industry, this really
started rising after Nintendo became the powerhouse of the game world. These
cases have been over names, ideas, and even theft or graphics and code. A
famous case is over a game called Karate
Champ and World Karate Championship.
Data East v. Epyx. It was pretty crazy how many elements Epyx
actually took from Karate Champ. Back
when we first started getting these games, they were small. Few things were in
a game compared to modern games. So when the two games were compared, they
found 15 similarities between them. It’s like Epyx just took Data East’s game
and changed the name. It was even released on the same platform, the Commodore
64! So, what happened? The court when in favor of Epyx. The judge stated, “The
only parts of the game the could be protected by a copyright were the areas in
which Data East made creative contributions.” Which the only areas was the
scoreboard and backgrounds; the two games had very different backgrounds. The
decision by the court would impact future decisions by Data East, which would
come around with Capcom taking them to court over Street Fighter II and Data East’s Fighter History. Again, similar happening in the games, but this
time around, Data East won the case. (The Ultimate History of Video Games, pgs.
368-371)
In a 1989 case, Nintendo was
actually in court against all fifty states and as well as Washington D.C. The
Tramiels (who founded Commodore and Atari) accused Nintendo of shutting the
Atari Corporation out of the market and filed a 500 million dollar suit. They
got accused from a number of things, including: price fixing, shutting out
competitors, overregulating licensees, and bullying retailers. At the end of it
all Nintendo gave out 5 dollar coupons towards their next game cartridge to
everybody who bought the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) between the dates
if June 1, 1988 and December 31, 1990. This resulted in less than 5 million
dollars in discounts. They also had to pay the states and Washington D.C 1.75
million dollars for administrative costs and 3 million dollars for other
uses. In October if 1990, Nintendo
announced that all of it’s licensees were free to make their own cartridges and
put them on other consoles. (The Ultimate History of Video Games, pgs.
389-390)
References:
The Ultimate History of Video Games, Steven L. Kent,
2001
