[rplnt]

How long before github takes it down? Not trying to make fun of Github's record of "censorship", just that the Tetris Company is known to be active in protecting the game. Even mechanics, which is weird, but they are pretty successful.

[0xcde4c3db]

> Even mechanics, which is weird, but they are pretty successful.

I haven't been able to find a free source for the actual ruling, but apparently a district court ruled in 2012 that the particular playfield dimensions, set of tetromino shapes, set of movement actions, and scoring rules are copyright-protected expressions of more general/abstract rules, and only the latter are ineligible for copyright [1]. To my untrained eye, this seems to parallel Oracle's "structure, sequence, and organization" argument for API copyright.

[1] http://www.wired.co.uk/article/tetris-clone-ruling

[zerocrates]

> I haven't been able to find a free source for the actual ruling

The case is Tetris Holding v. Xio Interactive, 863 F.Supp.2d 394 (D.N.J. 2012).

The text of the ruling is available a few places, for example on Google Scholar:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=180648822600252...

Keep in mind though that it's a district court ruling and has pretty limited value in predicting other outcomes.