A video game clone is either a video game or a video game console very similar to, or heavily inspired by, a previous popular game or console. Clones are typically made to take financial advantage of the popularity of the cloned game or system, but clones may also result from earnest attempts to create homages or expand on game mechanics from the original game. An additional motivation unique to the medium of games as software with limited compatibility, is the desire to port a simulacrum of a game to platforms that the original is unavailable for or unsatisfactorily implemented on.
The legality of video game clones is governed by copyright and patent law. In the 1970s, Magnavox controlled several patents to the hardware for Pong, and pursued action against unlicensed Pong clones that led to court rulings in their favor, as well as legal settlements for compensation. As game production shifted to software on discs and cartridges, Atari sued Philips under copyright law, allowing them to shut down several clones of Pac-Man. By the end of the 1980s, courts had ruled in favor of a few alleged clones, and the high costs of a lawsuit meant that most disputes with alleged clones were ignored or settled through to the mid-2000s. In 2012, courts ruled against alleged clones in both Tetris Holding, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc. and Spry Fox, LLC v. Lolapps, Inc., due to explicit similarities between the games' expressive elements.
Legal scholars agree that these cases establish that general game ideas, game mechanics, and stock scenes cannot be protected by copyright – only the unique expression of those ideas. However, the high cost of a lawsuit combined with the fact-specific nature of each dispute has made it difficult to predict which game developers can protect their games' look and feel from clones. Other methods like patents, trademarks, and industry regulation have played a role in shaping the prevalence of clones.
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