Spry Fox Attacks the Clones: Is Palpatine Behind This?
(Cross-posted from Terra Nova)
A few days ago, there was an interesting ruling in the Triple Town / Yeti Town game cloning case, a.k.a. Spry Fox, LLC v. Lolapps, Inc. Triple Town and Yeti Town are both casual puzzle apps where tile elements are assembled and evolve. Spry Fox had sought to license the game to the defendants, but the defendants pursued a cloning strategy instead. The litigation presents roughly the same sorts of legal issues as the current EA/Zynga dispute and the recent Tetris clone decision.
This particular case has been talked up pretty extensively in the blogosphere over the last year. For instance, James Grimmelmann had some thoughts about the early stages of the litigation and game cloning generally:
“if Triple Town flops on the iPhone because Yeti Town eats its lunch, at
some point Dave and his colleagues won’t be able to afford to spend
their time writing games any more.”
Eric Goldman weighed in yesterday on this new ruling, connecting it to the EA litigation:
“The Triple Town ruling suggests that Zynga probably can’t score a quick win.”
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