Macworld Forums: Mac OS X Tetris clone gets shut down - Macworld Forums

Quinn, a networkable variation on the classic arcade game Tetris, has been pulled from circulation by its developers following a threat from the lawyers representing The Tetris Company. more

Quinn is a great game! Simple and specific - no nauseating graphics or seizure causing flashes. I went looking for such a tetris game that didn't assault my senses with cool-the-first-time then progressively-less-cool-to-annoying effects. Quinn is perfect in this regard.
It's a shame that it's been pulled. I certainly am not going to delete the last version I downloaded while it was free.

Seems a bit tight considering the age of the game.
There again if the developers are charging for it then they deserve to get slapped.

I guess you may have missed the word "freeware" in the first sentence...

Unbelievable. Maybe they want some of the obscene profits Simon has made off of his amazing implementation of the game... oh wait. THAT'S $0! As far as I'm concerned Tetris is almost like chess or checkers... who really owns it? I know that legally this sentence, and sentiment hold little water, but there's also the expression "use it or lose it" and the company holding the rights to Tetris hasn't exactly gone out of its way to produce an OS X version, nor have they shown much activity on their official web site which has been little more than a placeholder page exclaiming "coming soon" for over a year.
Leave Simon Haertel alone, he's created a fabulous little piece of freeware that I've enjoyed since version 1.3, seeing as the owners of Tetris haven't bothered to create one for we Mac users yet. I own legally purchased copies of Tetris and Tetris II for the Gameboy so I've anted up already. I suggest that the over-paid, over-zealous lawyers buzz off (you can replace that word with a more colourful expletive when you read this sentence) and get a real job, perhaps working pro-bono to ensure, at long last that Dmitry Pavlovsky is paid some of the millions he was robbed out of, mainly by companies like the one suing Simon Haertel.
Jacques

Copyright violation? IANAL, but I don't think you can copyright the elements the story cites as being under contention by The Tetris Company. If they have any claims, I would believe that they fall under patent or design patent protection (if The Tetris Company has filed appropriately for such protection). Can the editorial staff (or someone else qualified) please explain?

what blows me away on this story is that i was on Simon's site yesterday, downloading Quinn and some of the extras. i was impressed at how polished it had become since i played with it in 2003 (i even submitted some of the extras he had on his site). and then to come in today to find that he's had to pull it all down...just, wow.
anyone know where i can send The Tetris Company a nice e-card depicting the extension of a certain finger?

As its freeware and the tetris courp are surely not making money anymore why the hassle? Its like doing someone for pac man. These are games consigned to history. Let it become public property.

I can understand all sides to this matter but if you read the history of tetris and how Alexey Pazhitnov got screwed until he formed The Tetris Company then you can sorta sympathize.

Partly because if you don't defend your copyright when it's infringed, you can't defend it when money is on the line. One can argue that the horse has already left the barn on this one. Either way, it's a shame -- Quinn's an excellent game.