07-18-2021, 12:15 PM
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:
