RE: Running scared from NAMCO

Humm, looks like the TBS and NAMCO lawsuit is
reducing the amount of multi-games on the market. :-(

(The phrase "duck and cover" comes to mind. ;-)

Is this going to influence our "vector" mulitgames and
artwork projects? Will this all go underground or become completely
terminated like the Dragon's Lair Artwork project?

(TBS seems to have crossed the line by making an entirely new Ms. Pac
Cocktail game with all reproduction components. Namco doesn't seem
interested in the SuperABC or other stuff. The case against an "upgrade"
kit is probably a little rickity because they waited too long to try to
enforce copyright on them. Statute of limitations on copyright violations
in the US is three years. Proving damages or loss of income for a product
you haven't sold or supported in 16 years is a little tough too. If you
haven't gone after 4 million free downloads of your copyrighted program code
on 10,000 emulator websites for the last three years that doesn't help
either...)

Any comments from the "underground" vectorlist? I'm guessing
this will all become covert in the next few months ...

(Well, my $0.02 is that Namco probably wants to re-release Pacman/Ms.Pacman
for the 20th anniversary and they probably want www.pacman.com
<http://www.pacman.com> and www.mspacman.com <http://www.mspacman.com> for
themselves. If they get what they want they'll probably let the rest slide.
On the other hand, they also don't need to ever "win" one of these things in
court-- they just keep the "little guy" burried under depositions, motions,
continuances, etc. and bleed all your money off, then they "win" by forfeit
so to speak. Nobody's told me to stop doing the multigame stuff, but I
think it's wise to not go out of my way to rub their noses in it. I'm going
to just keep a low profile and try not to piss anyone off. If any copyright
owner asks/tells me to stop I will certainly comply without a fight. By and
large I think they probably [unofficially] like having some reproductions
and replacement parts around so they don't have to deal with "tech support"
calls for 20 year old equipment. I think TBS just kinda crossed the line by
making something that competes with the "big guys" toe-to-toe in some
markets.)

Either way, I'm not eager to try to push their buttons and see exactly where
the new "line" is to cross that fires them up. Filing a suit is a pretty
extreme thing for a big company to do out of the blue-- I wonder if TBS
didn't ignore a cease and decist order or do something else to aggravate
Namco. (Like tell them to bugger off when they wanted to buy the pacman.com
domain or something...)

-Clay
Received on Mon Nov 22 20:03:17 1999