Apple defeats tech writer's copyright lawsuit over 'Tetris' movie
March 6 - Apple (AAPL.O), opens new tab convinced a New York federal court on Thursday to dismiss a copyright lawsuit brought by tech journalist Dan Ackerman, who accused the tech giant of ripping off his book about the landmark video game "Tetris" for a movie on the same subject.
U.S. District Judge Katherine Failla said, opens new tab that the book and the movie were not similar enough to support Ackerman's allegations.
Ackerman, Apple and attorneys for both sides did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the decision. The Tetris Company, which owns the rights to the game and was also a defendant, did not immediately respond to a similar request.
Ackerman's "The Tetris Effect: The Game That Hypnotized the World" was published in 2016. The book describes the Soviet history of the popular puzzle game and the fight for its global licensing rights as a "Cold War thriller with a political intrigue angle," according to the lawsuit.
Ackerman said he sent a pre-publication copy of the book to the Tetris Company earlier that year. He said the company refused to license its intellectual property for projects related to his book, dissuading film producers from adapting it, and sent him a "strongly worded cease and desist letter."
According to the complaint, the company's CEO Maya Rogers and screenwriter Noah Pink began copying Ackerman's book for the "Tetris" screenplay in 2017. "Tetris" was released in 2023 on the Apple TV platform. Ackerman sued Apple and the Tetris Company for copyright infringement later that year.
Failla dismissed Ackerman's case on Thursday, finding that the works' similarities were largely based on the same uncopyrightable facts about Tetris' history.
"Since Plaintiff's Book is a work of non-fiction, Defendants were entitled to use the facts contained in his Book in the making of their Film, so long as they did not copy his unique expression of those facts," Failla said.
The case is Ackerman v. Pink, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 1:23-cv-06952.
For Ackerman: Kevin Landau of the Landau Group
For the defendants: Barry Slotnick and Tal Dickstein of Loeb & Loeb
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