Cookie Monster, Pac-Man. Pac-Man, Cookie Monster.

[Will Collier]

If this had been in an arcade cabinet in 1981 or so, it would have been a license to print money.

https://www.sesamestreet.org/games?id=160

[N-OS X-tasy!]

What it would have been is copyright infringement, if not properly licensed.

[Will Collier]

N-OS X-tasy! wrote:
What it would have been is copyright infringement, if not properly licensed.

Google "Pac-Man bootlegs" sometime. There were umpty-zillion of them... but I'm sure Namco and Sesame Street could have found a rea$on to make a legit deal.

[C(-)ris]

There goes a couple hours....

[N-OS X-tasy!]

Will Collier wrote:
[quote=N-OS X-tasy!]
What it would have been is copyright infringement, if not properly licensed.

Google "Pac-Man bootlegs" sometime. There were umpty-zillion of them... but I'm sure Namco and Sesame Street could have found a rea$on to make a legit deal.
I'm guessing none of those bootlegs was put out by as well-known an organization with as much to lose as the Children's Television Workshop.

I don't disagree about the likelihood of them coming to a financial agreement, though.

[Rick-o]

I started to play, and then said, NOPE! I knew I would spend the rest of the day with it.

[Will Collier]

N-OS X-tasy! wrote:
[quote=Will Collier]
[quote=N-OS X-tasy!]
What it would have been is copyright infringement, if not properly licensed.

Google "Pac-Man bootlegs" sometime. There were umpty-zillion of them... but I'm sure Namco and Sesame Street could have found a rea$on to make a legit deal.
I'm guessing none of those bootlegs was put out by as well-known an organization with as much to lose as the Children's Television Workshop.

I don't disagree about the likelihood of them coming to a financial agreement, though.
That industry was very weird about copyright. Atari made a Jaws game in the mid-70's that was just a blatant cash-in on the movie, without a license. They were worried enough to set up a shell company to release it in case Universal sued (and botched that by still printing ATARI on the motherboards), but nothing ever happened.

Later on, a bunch of MIT undergraduates coded up a souped-up version of Pac-Man called Crazy Otto that they were going to sell to game operators as a daughtercard upgrade. Namco got wind of it and threatened to sue, but when they saw how good the actual game was they bought the code instead. That was a very cagey move, as a revised version became Ms. Pac-Man, one of the biggest hits of all time.

The same group had already released a Missile Command upgrade and gotten sued by Atari, but the suit got settled when Atari just hired them all as game developers, about the same time as they made their deal with Namco for Crazy Otto...

[tenders]

Curious about the Jaws situation. The word is common so it isn’t copyrightable or trademarkable, nor are sharks, nor are shark fins, etc. The music is, of course.

Pac Man and Missile Command are trademarkable, and certainly were.

[N-OS X-tasy!]

tenders wrote:
Curious about the Jaws situation. The word is common so it isn’t copyrightable or trademarkable, nor are sharks, nor are shark fins, etc. The music is, of course.

Pac Man and Missile Command are trademarkable, and certainly were.

"Missile Command" was a commonly used phrase already, especially within the context of... well, missile command.

"Jaws" and sharks are each common on their own, but combined in the same manner that they were for the movie? Yeah, that's probably copyrightable.

[Will Collier]

N-OS X-tasy! wrote:
[quote=tenders]
Curious about the Jaws situation. The word is common so it isn’t copyrightable or trademarkable, nor are sharks, nor are shark fins, etc. The music is, of course.

Pac Man and Missile Command are trademarkable, and certainly were.

"Missile Command" was a commonly used phrase already, especially within the context of... well, missile command.

"Jaws" and sharks are each common on their own, but combined in the same manner that they were for the movie? Yeah, that's probably copyrightable.
The Missile Command upgrade was renamed "Super Missile Attack" to try and avoid a trademark suit. Atari sued anyway, and that lawsuit was a pretty big deal in early tech, regarding deconstruction and reverse engineering and reuse of somebody else's hardware and software. The legal issues didn't get resolved because they settled out of court, and a lot of them came up again in Apple/Microsoft/Xerox suits later on. It's a really interesting story:

https://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.c...ttack.html

The official name of the Jaws game was "Shark Jaws," but the "Shark" part was in a tiny font. Pretty shameless, even by Nolan Bushnell's standards (and I am a Nolan fan). If Universal had wanted to sue, I doubt they'd have had much trouble making their case that it was infringing: