‘Tris’ to be Removed from App Store August 27th

by Jody Mitoma on August 27, 2008 at 3:52 am

Noah Witherspoon has agreed to have Tris removed from the iPhone App Store on Wednesday because of copyright infringement. The developers of Tetris offer their own app on the App Store for just short of $10, which Tris had been released to the public via the App Store for free of charge.

EA was not impressed when they had found out about Tris, and are now asking Noah to have it removed. Noah has since then agreed to have it removed, and will have it taken off of the App Store by Wednesday afternoon.

Well — I’ve received notice from Apple that they’ve been contacted by The Tetris® Company about Tris. That, I’m afraid, is essentially game over. Do they have a case? No. Not really. I am convinced that if it went to court, the “copyright” claim would get thrown out completely. The trademark, perhaps not — but if I changed the name, to e.g. “Trys”, that would be much harder for them to argue.

Sad thing is, Tris was actually better than EA’s version of Tetris in a few ways, such as loading time, and the possibility to have iPod music playing in the background while playing the game.

I suggest that those who would like to get a copy of the #1 selling “free” App Store game of the past few days to get their butts out of bed and get downloading. (Sorry to those whom read this too late.)

However do have it known that Noah does want to offer the game at some point in the future, and is now taking the time to evaluate his options.

(via TUAW)

2 Responses to “‘Tris’ to be Removed from App Store August 27th”

Eric March said:

August 27th, 2008 at 9:26 am

Jeez. It must suck being the 4,376th developer to write a Tetris clone and finding out that of all the others, you’re the one being picked on.

Not that I’m picking on Noah, his game is pretty good as Tetris games go. If anything it just sounds like EA is bullying the little guys and eliminating the competition.

We should write a Tetris game, change it just enough that EA has no legal grounds on which to file suit, but make it familiar enough that there’s no doubt in EA’s mind what we’re doing. Maybe even make it a bit of a parody. Then we release it in the App Store as a freebie. Hey, it ain’t like Tetris is hard to write.

I think we’ll call it tEAtrys.

heh-heh-heh. Teat.
UncleBoogie said:

August 27th, 2008 at 5:45 pm

What a bunch of jackasses. EA are bastards.