On Tuesday, May 01, 2007 12:50 am Wart wrote:
It was recently brought to my attention[1] that the bsd-games package contains 'tetris-bsd', a curses-based tetris clone. This was an oversight on my part, because if I had paid closer attention during the review I would have stripped the name 'tetris' and replaced it with something less objectionable. Now that I know, I'll do that anyway.
But the bug report is claiming that all tetris clones are illegal and should be removed, not just the name 'tetris'. What is the legal status of tetris (and other game) clones? Can we get some "official" word from a legal department on what is and isn't allowed?
--Wart [1]https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=238526
IANAL, but it is generally not possible to claim copyright over a game, so only the title would be in a state of legal violation (as the term Tetris is a registered trademark).