So we're gonna side with Zynga on this because it is innovating by bringing The Sims to Facebook and EA is trying to block innovation with IP lawsuits here, right?
Hell no. This isn't like craigslist vs. padmapper because EA was never founded as a pseudo-charity and Zynga is not the little guy. Zynga with it's 60%-70% Cloned portfolio is the bad guy. EA's flaws are by accident and ignorance, Zynga's flaws are willful and on purpose.
I've noticed a lot of comments here state that "you can't copyright a genre". These are people who did NOT read the complaint or see the screenshots comparing The Ville with the Sims. GO and READ the complaint. Jesus, it's one click away. Just skim all the way through it and look at the pictures. It is blatant copying. No mistake. Pure facts. Cloning. Copyright infringement.
Zynga might have finally bit off more than it could chew. Lets hope it chokes and dies a miserable and embarrassing death.
It comes down to: did Zynga break the law as it currently stands (probably), is the law just (imo no).
These are multinational corporations. Applying labels like good-guy, bad-guy, underdog, etc are meaningless. The only question is whether they are lawful. Everything else is left to the consumer.
By the way, Zynga usually beats their competitors because in the long run their clones are better than the originals. Like it or not, but thats innovation.
By the way, Zynga usually beats their competitors because in the long run their clones are better than the originals. Like it or not, but thats innovation.
I think cross-advertising through their other games to their massive existing user base has much more to do with it.
because in the long run their clones are better than the originals.
Nonsense. Zynga just used it's position and money to better advertise, brand, & connect their games together using facebook as a marketing channel. MS did the same thing with Internet Explorer. IE had the highest market share all these years NOT because it was better than Netscape, Firefox, & Opera. But because MS used their position, money, and installed base. Once at the top, a monopoly is hard to overthrow.
More recently, that is true. But it doesn't explain how their early successes (poker, mafia wars, farmville) succeeded before they had the money and the market share to do those things. Back before they were a monopoly and back before they did cross-promos.
So little guy vs big guy has relevance? I thought the law was what was relevant. Suggesting that the perpetrator of an act ought to be treated differently based on factors unrelated to the actual action seems wrong. If a poor homeless guy robs my house, I want him just as arrested as the rich guy that does it.
But, if we're supposed to be pulling for the little guy, then we should be supporting Apple against Samsung right? Samsung makes over twice Apple's yearly revenue. The blatant copying by Samsung of Apple (even down to icon colors and packaging design) is just as obvious as Zynga's ripoff.
What are you an emotionless corporate suit? Of course little guy vs. big guy has relevance. Consumers are very emotional creatures. You might be logical but the world around you is not.
Why do you think we all flocked to Google and give it a chance back in early days of Lycos, Yahoo, MS, & AltaVista? It wasn't because we were educated about its new "page rank" algorithm. It was the story behind the company. The same thing that led us towards Facebook and Craigslist. It's NOT the only factor in using a service, the service has to be good obviously and provide something the others don't. But there are endless cases where being better doesn't bring home the bacon. It's the human element, the emotional factor that can win people over and get them to give you a try.
"Little guy" is simply a way of saying "ability to have empathy for". When a company is vulnerable, non aggressive, new, innocent, we tend to see them as something pure and beautiful that must be protected from a brutal world. like a flower. Cheesy I know, but it works.
Isn't this exactly the same as the Apple vs. Samsung wars? Although those involve patents and this involves copyright, it comes down to the same moral issue. Company #1 starts selling black glass slabs and company #2 clones themm in almost every respect.
At some fundamental level you either think that competition "should" involve innovation and/or original design in order to incentivise peopel to create original products, or you think that cloning look and feel is part of the market operating efficiently without artifical barriers.
The Apple vs. Android holy war spans many different devices, user interfaces, brands, packaging methods, and advertisements. Some Android phones copy the iPhone/iOS more than others. For example, I feel that the Galaxy S1 absolutely tries to copy many key aspects of iPhone and iOS, down to the device appearance, UI appearance, packaging, and marketing (in terms of visuals). However, I don't feel that many other phones (such as the Galaxy Nexus) resemble the iPhone to the amount that Apple wishes it did.
In contrast to that situation, this EA vs. Zynga battle is over one specific product, with defined features and aesthetics.
Copying the many trivial details of a game down to specific color values is not the same thing as sharing a gross physical resemblance to a piece of glass with metal on the back and a screen with a grid of icons.
It's about as similar as a fish is to a bicycle.
Apple are showing themselves as patent trolls - noone else is allowed to create a smart phone that has black glass and rounded corners, which is about as generic as you get.
On the other hand, if you read the link above (the complaint), you will see that detailed feature, after detailed feature is copied (colours, layouts, mannerisms, interaction, selection screens, even the exact RGB colors of skin on characters). This is a complete clone superficially and in detail.
I have lost a lost of respect for EA over the years, but they deserve to wipe the floor with Zynga over this case.
One caveat - Samsung clearly copied the phone icon (although this was obviously taken from the keypad of existing mobile phones), packaging and connector from Apple. This is more obvious, but -FAR- less significant to the product than what Apple "borrowed" from Sony/Jony.
Change one word ("strikingly similar" to "substantially similar") and you have the very legal definition of a derivative work, an infringement on the original copyright (17 U.S.C. § 101).
My comment was mainly in the context of the parent comment's implied contradiction between our apparent siding with EA here, but our siding with Android in Apple v. Android.
