Atari is back in the news in a big way, with a new console, movies, and revivals of their old games in the works, and it seems their lawyers are keeping busy as well. Atari has filed a lawsuit against the Nestle, accusing the megacorporation of “blatantly” infringing on Atari copyrights for a Kit Kat ad campaign.
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The ad, which you can check out above, is for Kit Kat Bites, and shows four folks playing a video game that looks very much like Atari’s Breakout, except, of course, the blocks are replaced with Kit Kat fingers. The reference is pretty clear, but does Atari have a case? They certainly think they do:
“The infringing conduct in this case is so plain and blatant that Nestle cannot claim to be an ‘innocent’ infringer. Nestle knew exactly what it was doing. Nestle simply took the classic Breakout screen, replaced its bricks with Kit Kat bars, and invited customers to ‘breakout’ and buy more candy bars. [Nestle was hoping to leverage] the special place it holds among nostalgic Baby Boomers, Generation Xers, and even today’s Millennial and post-Millennial gamers.”
What Atari doesn’t mention is that people have been making Breakout clones for decades and the they haven’t been able to stop them. You can’t copyright a basic gameplay concept or mechanic – if you could there never would’ve been another platformer after Donkey Kong. So yeah, I doubt Atari will win this one, and they probably know that. This is likely them sending a message – we’re back, so at least get in touch before you make reference to our stuff in TV shows/movies/ads.
Check out all WWG’s Atari news (believe it or not, there’s been quite a bit lately) right here.
[via Reuters]
