Sega sues EA

[Melf]

From 1up.com:

Though the striking resemblance between Fox Interactive's The Simpson's Road Rage and Sega's Crazy Taxi has long been the source of snickering among enthusiast observers, it has now become the source of a legal smashup as well. Sega of America has filed suit in a San Francisco federal court against Fox Interactive, which owns the rights to games based on the Simpsons property, Electronic Arts, which published the game, and developer Radical Games, stating that Road Rage was designed as a deliberate imitation of Crazy Taxi.

Sega holds a lengthy and complex patent on aspects of Crazy Taxi's design, which of course is built around players picking up fares and recklessly driving them around a virtual city. The suit alleges that Road Rage violates that patent, by replacing the city in question with the cartoon's Springfield setting and otherwise leaving many aspects of the basic gameplay concept unchanged.

If you'd like to dig up the patent yourself, it can be found with a little searching under patent number 6,200,138 in the United States Patent and Trademark Office database.

Sega seeks the removal of Road Rage from retail shelves, a recall of all existing copies, and unspecified damages in return for lost profits. Road Rage has sold more than one million copies across multiple platforms worldwide. According to Reuters news service, no representatives of the defendants were willing or able to comment on the suit as yet.

Ouch. I don't see Sega winning this one easily, if at all. It looks like they want to make a buck of CT to make up for the 2 awful sequels they released.

[Diff-chan]

Pay attention, slugger: theyre suing over Road Rage, not Hit and Run...

they may have a case... but you know if Capcom couldn't win with Fighter's History, I dont see this happening.

[Melf]

D'oh! You're right! Post duly edited!

[Jeremy]

I love the "Road Rad" typo in the quoted piece. Sega might have a chance of winning this, but it's a slim one.

[burgundy]

Sega isn't going to win and should be slapped with penalties for even bringing a suit like this.

Shit...EA should countersue Sega for ripping off their sports titles.

[Frogacuda]

Sega isn't going to win and should be slapped with penalties for even bringing a suit like this.

Shit...EA should countersue Sega for ripping off their sports titles.

EA doesn't hold patents on any aspect of their sports titles copied by Sega.

This case is different because it's not a copyright case, it's a patent case, and previous cases like this had no such patent. Sega, apparently, did reserve intellectual property rights to the concept of Crazy Taxi.

You're reaction was my gut instinct, too, but I think if that patent they were granted means anything at all, this would be the case where it would be applicable.

[Melf]

I love the "Road Rad" typo in the quoted piece.

That's my bad. The original was all full of links in bold blue so I typed them normally. My spelling sucks tonight.

[NeoZeedeater]

I don't they should be able to patent that concept. If that's allowed than anyone can patent any broad game concept, including entire genres.

Sega better lose this suit.

[burgundy]

LOL @ my failure to read.

Yeah, that changes things, but the courts should apply the copyright reasoning and throw the questionable elements of the patent out. Otherwise everyone's going to file patents on their games and no one is going to be able to build off of anyone else's designs at all.

[Frogacuda]

The patent linked in the top post seems to be for Harley Davidson and LA Riders, btw, not Crazy Taxi. (EDIT: And this is further reinforced by the fact that the patent holders worked for AM1). It's probably implicated as well because they share much in structure and concept. Much of the patent details the whole free roaming race structure, but also the arrow display system, which is common to Crazy Taxi and Simpson's road Rage.

EDIT again: It seems to talk about a taxi game and motorcycle game alternately at different points. I guess it covers both.

I don't they should be able to patent that concept. If that's allowed than anyone can patent any broad game concept, including entire genres.

It's not that broad. In fact, it's pretty explicit, detailing alot of particulars to the display and game structure, etc. Hardly implicating the whole genre. The basis for the suit is that SRR really changed almost nothing and liften MANY of the things outlined in the patent.

Still I kind of agree that it's a dangerous precedent.