Lawsuit:
ATARI GAMES CORP. and TENGEN, INC. (Plantiff) V. NINTENDO OF AMERICA
INC. AND NINTENDO CO., LTD., (Defendant) - Tetris
Introduction
Alexey Pajitnov,
the creator of Tetris, met up with Vadim Gerasimov to make a better-looking
computer version of the game. It was distributed freely and one
copy ended up at the Institute of Computer Science located in
Budapest, Hungary. Robert Stein, president of a UK-based software
company, noticed the game and began trying to negotiate the rights
for Tetris from Pajitnov. Without permission or rights, Stein
went ahead and sold Tetris to Mirrorsoft in Europe and Spectrum
Holobyte in US. Then Mirrorsoft gave the rights to a man named
Henk Rogers, whom knew Nintendo, and Spectrum Holobyte passed
theirs along to Atari, and then to Sega.
Stein never
received the rights to Tetris in the end, even though he already
sold them off.
Rogers quickly
went to Russia to secure rights to port a handheld version to
be included in Nintendo's upcoming Game Boy, since he thought
the home console rights were taken by now. He was shocked to have
the entire video game rights offered and handed to him then and
there.
Atari - more
specifically - Tegen already began working on their home console
version. Tengen released the game in May '89 and Nintendo theirs
one month after.
Court
Summary
The overall
case was deciding who had the legal rights to Tetris.
Conclusion
There was
no trial. Nintendo's proof of contract with the Russians was all
that Judge Fern Smith needed. Nintendo had won and Tengen was
forced to recall their version. 280,000 copies were locked away,
and years later, destroyed.
