dan@aplvax.UUCP (08/30/83)
I believe that Atari has copyrighted the user interfaces of a number of their video games. In particular, I remember reading an article that they were going after PAC-MAN imitators based on the appearance of the video screens to the player. Essentially, they were claiming that the artwork of the video display was copyrighted and could not be duplicated. This would imply that the underlying program and algorithms are irrelevant, and that one cannot just mimic anothers user's interface. I cannot cite any specific court cases. Nor do I know how to obtain such information. This is what lawyers are supposedly the experts at (and why we pay them). Is there anyone out there who knows what cases Atari has brought against competitors, what the claims were and how the courts ruled on them. The results of such cases are setting the precedents for how software copyrights will be enforced.