Acmlm's Board - I2 Archive - General Emulation - MAME getting sued (or were they?)
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iamhiro1112
Posts: 225/487 |
It reminds me of the guy who tried to copyright the smiley face which had been in use for over ten years and then sue people who would use it with out his permission. The judge threw that case out. |
Kario
Posts: 1288/2082 |
Oh boy. Next thing you know NASA will have a new ship going to the moon called Lunar Magic and Nintendo will have a game called Mario Adventure. |
Colin
Posts: 6951/11302 |
Yeah... regardless of the intentions, I think this was something that should have been dealt with in private between the two parties and not shown to the whole emulation world. 
I'm sure the Patent Office is gonna have a field day with this one. |
Emptyeye
Posts: 1490/2273 |
It's also worth noting that he has NOT, in fact, obtained the trademark yet. If you look at the Patent Office page, the application hasn't even been looked over yet.
In fact, numerous people have sent the Patent Office E-mails saying "Um, no, it's not his to trademark".
Either way, though, this boils down to "I'm going to get people who are infringing on copyrights by in turn infringing on trademarks". |
Colin
Posts: 6943/11302 |
That's what I'm curious about. Now, I'm sure that things might have been different and more civil had they approached the MAME team about possibly copyrighting the product, but after pulling this stunt?  This could be interesting. |
neotransotaku
Posts: 2367/4016 |
Hmm..i went there just now and now I see the posting--talk about your internet caching
hmm...after reading that message, interesting--i wonder what the overseers of MAME are going to respond. Have they made an annoucment yet? |
Xkeeper
Posts: -2477/-863 |
Well, the article makes it very clear that they are not, in fact, suing MAME. Anyone up to change the topic?
(also, Zophar's ads are pretty sneaky; clicking once will bring up the ad, fooling the browser into thinking that it was requested. sneaky bastards!) |
Colin
Posts: 6924/11302 |
February 21, 2005
An open offer to the M.A.M.E. community.
Our recent actions to protect our products have met with a lot of controversy. Many
people have been quick to judge and make accusations about what we are attempting to
do, and what we have already done. It is my understanding that the spirit of the
M.A.M.E. community is
Prier
Posts: 5419/8392 |
Originally posted by neotransotaku
i went to Zophar, i'm not seeing the article...
At the moment, it is the very top article. |
neotransotaku
Posts: 2353/4016 |
i went to Zophar, i'm not seeing the article...
i wonder if the makers of mame have a GPL or some type of license, if that is the case, that is probably should hold. Otherwise, it is a technicality of which that CEO was using. This reminds me of the case about the person who invented christmas lights that mimic icicles and lost out on a lot of money because of something similar.
Something interesting--the guy who is filing the petition lives in my neighborhood  |
Karadur
Posts: 831/1192 |
I think that no matter what this guy does in the way of getting that name trademarked / copyrighted or whatever the word is, it's only going to affect the name of the emulator in the long run. After 8 years of knowing it as 'MAME', I'd be willing to bet all the end users of it will still refer to it by that name anyways.
However, for the developers of the emulator itself, that has to be a big smack in the face, seeing as they've used it for that long, and now they're being basically forced to change it 
I know it's not really feasible after reading those artices, but I really hope that guy doesn't get what he wants  It won't kill him to think up an original name, then everyone would be happy  |
Apophis
Posts: 349/882 |
This type of thing should be illegal. He clearly trademarked them for the sole purpose of filing this lawsuit. But why didn't MAME ever trademark it?
Edit: Here's a link to the CEO explaining what they are hoping to accomplish
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/21/0415209&mode=nocomment&tid=203&tid=17&tid=10 |
Prier
Posts: 5404/8392 |
I saw this while looking at Zophar and Colin did as well:
Emulator News: MAME trademarked by Ultracade CEO news by mooglyguy
20:44: David R. Foley, the CEO of Ultracade who has no affiliation with MAME whatsoever, has now trademarked the name and logo that has been used by MAME for the past eight years. It has been said that he plans to file suit against the authors of MAME. More on this situation as it develops. More information at the US Patent and Trademark Office website.
Good luck...gooood luck. |
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