Someone causing trouble for MAME?

[smcd]

Found this on zophar.net:

2/20/05

Emulator News: MAME trademarked by Ultracade CEO
20:44: David R. Foley, the CEO of Ultracade who has no affiliation with MAME whatsoever, has now trademarked the name and logo that has been used by MAME for the past eight years. It has been said that he plans to file suit against the authors of MAME. More on this situation as it develops. More information at the US Patent and Trademark Office website.
http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=76627578

All I have to say are 2 things: WHY? and WTF?

 

[PsyMan]

So he's going to sue all the authors of MAME and its variants (MAME plus, MAME 32, etc.)?
He obviously wants to make money but he probably won't make it. The worst possible scenario is that MAME will be renamed but I don't think so... It's more likely that he's gonna be sued by the MAME authors (MAME comes with a license and the logo is included, right?).

 

[Hexidecimal]

The guy is a frigging douche is what it comes down to, 'nuff said.

 

[Shpongled]

Please help keep us up-to-date on the progress of this lawsuit. Quite interesting. MAME is an acronym, so did the guy patent Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator or the acronym?

 

[rcgamer]

I dont see how he could possibly win if he didnt patent it till 2004 . of course knowing U.S. courts he will probably win and get $500,000,000

 

[Allnatural]

More information:

The original story - http://www.mameworld.net/mt/archive/2005/02/mame_copyright.php

A follow-up - http://www.mameworld.net/mt/archive/2005/02/mame_copyright_1.php

 

[smcd]

Yeah it's on slashdot.org now too:
http://games.slashdot.org/games/05/02/21/0415209.shtml?tid=203&tid=17&tid=10

It has a response from the guy "responsible."

Foley contacted Slashdot with an emailed explanation of the filing, reproduced below at his request.

"Subject: I would hope that you post this to correct your misstated comments on slash dot
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 01:27:43 -0800

Like most things that are spread by rumor, the facts about me, UltraCade Technologies, and the M.A.M.E. emulation system are quite distorted. I will try and educate anyone who cares to listen about the reality of our marketplace and what we are doing and what we are not. Simply put, we are making an effort to stamp out the commercial sales of M.A.M.E. based systems that advertise the ability to play thousands of games while relying on the customer to obtain the ROMs which can not legally be obtained. What we are not doing is trying to claim ownership of the M.A.M.E. open source emulator or sue its authors. We are concerned about the commercial marketplace, and not the readers of the many M.A.M.E. user groups and forums.

I have been working on emulation technology since the mid 80's when I did work on an emulation project in college. In 1994, while working on games for companies like Sega and Williams, we developed an emulation of the arcade games Joust, Defender and Robotron that ran on a Sega Genesis. In 1996, we started the Lucky 8 project which turned into the UltraCade project. In 1998 we were one of the first companies to acquire the rights to classic arcade games from various publishers. We have licensed games from several manufacturers including Capcom, Jaleco, Taito, Stern, Incredible Technologies, Midway, Atari and more. We have started several projects and built prototypes for companies like Sega, based on technology that was licensed from authors from the emulation community. We have licensed technology from many of the communities programmers, paying them to use their code in our products and demonstrations. We have been the leader of the retro arcade movement, and have invested millions of dollars creating a market for retro games. UltraCade was the first successful multi-game arcade machine combining many of the old classics. We further enhanced the market by creating Arcade Legends, our consumer version of the UltraCade product. We have also paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees to have the right to sell our games.

In the past couple of years, there has been a huge wave of resellers competing with our UltraCade and Arcade Legends products. They build a similar style cabinet, install a PC in the machine, load M.A.M.E., and sell it for a very low price. Lower than we could ever offer our machines for sale. How? Quite Simple. They profit by stealing others work. If you look at the web sites, and read the eBay ads they offer machines that "Play over 4,000 Classic Arcade Games" They then try and skirt the law by pretending that they are not promoting piracy of these same 4,000 games with statements like "we don't load the ROMs" but of course, almost all of them do. The others that don't, they provide you with an instruction sheet with a link to several web sites where you can illegally download the ROMs, or provide you with the contact information for a CD/DVD duplication house that will sell you a set of ROMs for all 4,000 games for less than $200. Would anyone really buy this arcade machine if they knew that there was no legal way for them to run over 99% of the games that they were promised, I don't think so, and if you really look at this without emotion, I'm sure you would agree. These companies are simply selling the promise of thousands of games on a machine that can not possibly run them legally. I sometimes hear the argument, "well, I could go on eBay and buy up all of these games and then run it", and while plausible, it certainly would not be anywhere near cost effective, and again, if the customer knew that to legally operate these games, they have to spend thousands of dollars buying legal ROMs I seriously doubt that they would consider purchasing a M.A.M.E. machine. Anyone reading this email thread is an intelligent person, and if they put emotions aside, they will realize that what we are saying about selling M.A.M.E. machines and the promise of getting 4,000 games for the average consumer can't possibly happen. Unlike most of you reading this, the average consumer looking to buy a machine for their game room has no idea how emulation works, or what is legal and illegal to do. To them, they read an advertisement on a website or on eBay and compare our product with 50 games or an ad for a machine that promises thousands of games, with the promise of instructions about how to obtain those games. Of course, in this skewed environment the average consumer would gravitate towards the thousands of games machine, not realizing that the software and the games are unlicensed and illegal to play. Most consumers who are pointed at a web site selling a 7 DVD set of ROMs have no idea that this is an act of piracy, they were simply instructed to do this by the person selling them their arcade cabinet, and told this is how you get the games.

Now that we have attempted to take legal recourse to prevent illegal competition, the same people, who steal the work of the M.A.M.E. authors, and then profit by selling machines that have no value without the pirated games being made available, turn around and cry foul when we call them on their ways. They run to the M.A.M.E. discussion forums and spread rumors about UltraCade suing the authors of M.A.M.E. or stealing the M.A.M.E. engine. I'm amazed at the response of the community, a community that is being whipped into action by the same people who are stealing and profiting from them and they're efforts. Many people have reacted with hate mail without even considering to look at the facts of the situation, or to realize who is spreading the rumors. They are being spread by those who wish to profit by selling unlicensed games.

The simple fact is that we are attempting to stop the tide of illegal arcade machines, and the promotion of unlicensed games. The M.A.M.E. platform, while a technical marvel, consists of many violations of copyrights and trademarks. The authors have always stated in the documentation that it was not put into the public domain to steal from the game authors or publishers, and they have always been hands off about how to obtain the ROMs. They have also clearly stated that it is not to be used for commercial gains. A majority of the publishers who own the copyrighted material have not paid much attention to this marketplace, as until recently it has not had a huge commercial impact. But now, there are websites and eBay sellers selling machines that directly compete with legitimate publishers like us who publish games from Capcom, Taito, Midway, Atari and others, or publishers like Namco that publish Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga or the Donkey Kong/Mario Bros. machines.

Of the many thousands of games that M.A.M.E. supports, only a minute fraction of them can legally be played on a M.A.M.E. equipped machine, and many can not. There are many fallacies about the legality of owning ROMs and how you can play the game. Many people claim that they have a board set and therefore they can download as many ROMs as they like. The law is very strict. You can transfer the image from the actual original ROM chips, which you legally own, to another piece of hardware, provided that you actually transfer the code from the chips. Just having a board sitting around, and saying I have the right to play it is not the case. Many people point to StarROMs and say that they can then sell the games with the ROMs installed. This is not the case either. StarROMs license prohibits the resale of the game licenses, and only the end user can purchase these ROM images, resellers can not. Our market is further plagued by the rash of 4 in 1, 9 in 1, 24 in 1 39 in 1 and the new 300 in 1 "multicade" boards. These boards come from Taiwan and Hong Kong and contain illegal copies of the ROMs of several games.

This is a complex case amongst companies that are trying to make it about UltraCade stealing something from the M.A.M.E. team. That is not what this is about. This is simply UltraCade Technologies and other publishers doing whatever it takes to protect our commercial interests and prevent other companies from stealing our market by capitalizing on unlicensed games and selling products that only have value when coupled with illegally obtained games. Our application towards a trademark is to simply prevent anyone from commercially marketing an illegal product, nothing more. There have been no lawsuits filed against any of the M.A.M.E. authors, and there have been no claims towards the open source engine, nor will there be We are simply protecting our commercial market, and nothing more. We have no interest in the hobby community. We have no interest in the open source project. Our goal is to simply stop the rampant piracy in our marketplace, and we will use every means at our disposal to do so.

I welcome open discussions about this situation, and will respond to legitimate communications or questions.

-David R. Foley

 

[rcgamer]

well, that sounds perfectly reasonable to me. And if that is true then good luck to them.

 

[smcd]

Reasonable? Just because someone unrelated to MAME is causing them to have a bad day doesn't mean they should piss on the MAME project by trying to trademark their logo to remove the (possibly illegal - only if they DO load the machines with ROMs) competition. Complete bollocks and no better than the people they're going after if you ask me.

 

[rcgamer]

maybe you need to read it again. they arent going after mame they are going after the people who put mame in a cabinet and sell it or try to gain profit from it , wich if you bothered to read the agreement that comes with mame you would see that that is one of the stipulations of using mame. not to profit comercially.


II. Cost
--------
MAME is free. Its source code is free. Selling either is not allowed.

 

[Allnatural]

If the folks at Ultracade were part of MAMEdev it wouldn't matter.

As of now, Ultracade is only trying to trademark the MAME name and logo (which they didn't create), so as to go after those quasi-companies that use the MAME name to sell their "4000 games in 1" disks, cabs, etc.. Said companies could easily use a different name (or none at all, "4000 games in 1" is all most people need to see anyway) so the trademarking would be ineffectual at best (the MAME license prevents this already), and very bad at worst..."we own the name, WE own the code."

I doubt Ultracade could ever claim ownership of the code; it's been around too long, but it's a potential legal hassle no one wants to deal with.

 

[smcd]

I wasn't meaning or saying they were going after MAME after reading his statement, but that trying to go after companies that use MAME in their machines is rather lame. The only time they would be in violation of law (to my understanding) is if they load the machine up with games or tell you where to get them.

 

[rcgamer]

If the folks at Ultracade were part of MAMEdev it wouldn't matter.

As of now, Ultracade is only trying to trademark the MAME name and logo (which they didn't create), so as to go after those quasi-companies that use the MAME name to sell their "4000 games in 1" disks, cabs, etc.. Said companies could easily use a different name (or none at all, "4000 games in 1" is all most people need to see anyway) so the trademarking would be ineffectual at best (the MAME license prevents this already), and very bad at worst..."we own the name, WE own the code."

I doubt Ultracade could ever claim ownership of the code; it's been around too long, but it's a potential legal hassle no one wants to deal with.

good points. Thats why i said if what he said is true. In any case i see no way for this trademark to be awarded unless the mamedev team just dont fight it.

 

[Reznor007]

They could possibly end up in jail for lying on a trademark application. You are only supposed to file a trademark if you are the owner of the product.

Also, you can legally obtain ROM's to use with MAME. Hanaho sells a CD with several Capcom games specifically for use with MAME, and Starroms has many Atari games available. Not to mention that you can dump the games that you own.

The guy has already had Ebay auctions shut down for simply mentioning MAME in the auction details. One of those guys posts on the MAME board and he sells arcade PC's with ROM's crosslicensed from Starroms. His was 100% legal, yet it was still shut down because of him.

 

[smcd]

According to what I read about starroms the license isn't transferrable? Don't know for certain, would have to look.

 

[dragon_rider]

It's morons like him who always win by trying to gyp people who use emulators. If I were working on my own unofficial releases of MAME, I'd tell the person who was trying to buy it to piss up a rope. Well, then there's EA, those dorks are trying to monopolize the gaming industry (Microsoft anyone?) by having exclusive right for NFL games AND by having 20% of Ubisoft's shares. They're gonna crash and burn (both the people trying to buy MAME and EA). Freakin' punks!

 

[Allnatural]

He's trying to trademark the name and logo, not copyright the code.

 

[Reznor007]

According to what I read about starroms the license isn't transferrable? Don't know for certain, would have to look.

The license isn't transferrable, but they have a deal with Starroms that lets the buyer of one of his machines get a license in their name.

 

[dragon_rider]

Still, it's kinda annoying when they do that crap. What good would it do him? I woudn't pay those people royalties even if I had the money for using the name MAME.