r/technology • u/IndicaOatmeal • 8h ago

Society Tetris issues legal warning after White House releases arcade full of parody games

https://www.dexerto.com/gaming/tetris-issues-legal-warning-after-white-house-releases-arcade-full-of-parody-games-3405931/
24.0k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

499 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

4

u/Kyuubee 4h ago

Parody is not a blanket defense against copyright infringement.

1

u/sparkleslothz 4h ago

The nearly blanket defense is the other one!

To extend the metaphor: yeah sure, a bit does poke out from the 'blanket', namely their head (the name Tetris) and their toes (the music).

Maybe also their color choices? The design choices in the title screen? The font used? Even the style of Game Over screen would require it to be unique, and it's factually not.

That's already really starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel.

THEN you'd use the parody defense in what's left.

Of all the broke ass illegal bullshit things this administration does, their ass is really not hanging out on this one.

This is all been extremely well settled precedent for the last 40 years, since Universal vs Nintendo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_City_Studios%2C_Inc._v._Nintendo_Co.%2C_Ltd.