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Comment by arn | Hacker News Reader

It's one thing to make a Doodle Jump-like game. But this is being called the trademarked name Doodle Jump, and you've copied the artwork straight from Doodle Jump.

Seems certain this isn't an official licensed version. In which case, you should change all those items immediately. It's illegal and it's just not cool.

Here are the guys you are ripping off. Igor and his brother. Igor is a very nice guy:

http://allthingsd.com/20120823/how-to-become-an-app-store-mi...

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It's one thing to make a Pacman-like game. But this is being called the trademarked name Pacman, and you've copied the artwork straight from Pacman.

Seems certain this isn't an official licensed version. In which case, you should change all those items immediately. It's illegal and it's just not cool.

Here are the guys you are ripping off. Tōru Iwatani and his friends at Namco. Tōru is a very nice guy:

http://pacmanmuseum.com/history/Toru-Iwatani.php

where did you find him ripping Pacman off? If true (I searched through his sites, but couldnt find anything relevant), this would be like the comment of the month to me :)

Also, just like being a "nice guy" or "an asshole" would make a difference, whether or not its OK to rip someone off...

his comment is nonsensical. it doesn't have anything to do with anything. not sure where he got to pacman.

He is being ironic, since anyone and everyone has ripped off pacman without pacman becoming less of an icon or the creator of pacman poorer.

It's flawed though, which is why it doesn't make sense.

There are tons of doodle jump alikes. In fact doodle jump was a clone of an existing iOS game (papi jump). We aren't complaining about imitating gameplay. Can you show me a PAC man clone that's called "Pac-man" and uses the exact same artwork?

If if called this "HTML jump" and made original artwork, no one would be complaining. It's clear why he copied it exactly. He wants people to be confused or to recognize his work because it rides on the reputation of doodle jump.

If he has created the art in photoshop himself, then no copyright is infringed even if they do look very similar.

As for the name, this will only matter if the original name was trademarked. If not, he can call it whatever he wants.

if it's not copyright infringement, it's trade dress infringement. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_dress

either way, he's in the wrong. and the name is trademarked.

If you're in the UK that doesn't appear to be the case. I'm not particularly versed in copyright law, but take a look at this example where the work was just "similar"

http://www.dpreview.com/news/2012/01/25/Imitated_Image_Copyr...

It's called "substantial similarity." One of the tests is whether a "reasonable observer" would be likely to mistake one for the other.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantial_similarity

It's nice work but the author should've used different assets and a different name.

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