Gamertell

Apple’s App Store has plenty of fun games that can be downloaded and played on iPods and the iPhone alike. Unfortunately, there is one free game that ruffled the feathers of The Tetris Company enough to threaten legal action. The Tetris-style puzzle game known as Tris will be taken off the App Store this Wednesday (August 27, 2008).

The creator of the game, Noah Witherspoon, wrote on his blog that he was contacted by Apple informing him of The Tetris Company’s complaint. According to Witherspoon, the game’s name is way too similar to Tetris for the company to allow.

Noah doesn’t want to fight the claims at this time because he just doesn’t have the time or resources to do so. Witherspoon writes:

“The trouble is, I’m a college student, and not an affluent one, and I simply do not have the time, energy, or resources to fight this battle right now…

I don’t think this will be permanent; when I have the time and can find a good copyright lawyer, I’ll be figuring out exactly what my position is and how I can make Tris available again.”

Witherspoon is pretty certain that he could solve this problem by simply changing the games name from Tris to “Trys” because the Tetris trademark is the issue rather than the game’s content. His game will still remain on the Apple servers but won’t be available to the public until he can cut through all the legal tape.

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