(Back in February I had a class called Game History. For part of my final assignment in the class I had to write a short piece based on the information we learned in the class. I choose to write about Nintendo's legal problems during the 80's. Just two really high profile cases that ended up impacting the game industry. Part of the assingment was to make a blog post about it. Which I did under a diffrent account. However, now I'm going to be sharing it publicly with you, my readers. Just for the fun of it!. Tell me your thoughts about the piece in the comment section if you'd like!)
During the late 80’s and early 90’s Nintendo dominated the gaming industry. Being dubbed the “King Of Video Gaming”. Of course once you are on top, others will attempt to challenge your rule, question the legitimacy of it or even try to trick the system to gain a leg up over their competitors. This fight however, doesn't happen on some battlefield; no it happens right on our home turf, our country’s court rooms.
Yes during Nintendo’s reign many companies launched several lawsuits against the company. The most notable ones include: Atari Games Corporation vs. Nintendo of America and Lewis Galoob Toys vs. Nintendo
Of America
Atari and Nintendo going to war sounds like a really bad plot to a cheesy 80’s B movie. However, this case was intense. Atari just wanted to make more than just five games for the NES. You see, Nintendo had in place a policy that would prevent developers and publishers to make more than five games for the system. This policy was enforced by a chip that was built into the machine. A chip called 10NES.
Atari tried to reverse engineer the chip but failed and what do you do when you fail at reverse engineering a chip? You break the law. Atari, contacted the Copyright office, and asked to see the copyright on Nintendo’s 10Nes Code. They pretended to be Nintendo. The nerve, am I right? Anyway, Nintendo won this fight, with the courts ruling that Atari had infringed on Nintendo’s copyright. They won this war but there were more to go.
Lewis Galoob Toys inc. made an add-on for the NES called the Game Genie. this add-on allowed users to use game cheats that allowed them to easily beat a game on that system. This made Nintendo quite upset and decided to threaten them with lawsuit. Well Galoob decided to take them up on that offer and declared that they were not infringing on Nintendo's copyright. This was a fight Nintendo could not win. Finally after a year of back and forth the judge ruled in favor of Galoob, stating that game genie did not infringe on their rights. As you can see now we still have mods to this day, and this case set a precedent to protect them
This is just a small section of amount of law-suits Nintendo had to face while in their prime. There were some victories and there were a few loses. Nintendo’s domination led to some pretty vicious claims from other companies. Including Atari, who believed they had created a shortage of game cartridges on purpose to control the market. There accusations that they bullied companies out of business and created a monopoly on the game industry. Things you would expect from jealous individuals. Despite all of this controversy and potentially damaging rumors, the company still remains.
Like What You Read? Here's How You Can Follow The Blog:
Official Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheVSoundblog
Official Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/ViolentSound
Or Follow by Google+ Or By Your Email
No comments:
Post a Comment