Maker of Tetrada Receives Takedown Letter from Attorneys of the Tetris Company

Marios Katagiannis creator of Monster Up and Tetrada recieved a letter from the lawyers of the Tetris Company telling him to remove Tetrada from the WP7 Marketplace. Tetrada as the name kind of gives away is a copycat of Tetris though Marios implies that through updates his game would have evolved into something different. On his blog he says that he was working on some "never-before-seen game modes' for Tetrada. Unfortunately I did not get the chance to snag Tetrada before it was removed from the Marketplace so we only have others' opinions to go on, and the feedback for Tetrada was in fact a pretty well made version of Tetris. Marios keeps his stance that the cease and desist order wasn't justified as his game did not violate any trademark rules:

What does this mean for “Knock-off”, “Home-Made” or Tetris “Clones”?

First off, lets call them “Tetromino games” so we don’t cross over into the Trademark argument. The answer is that ANYONE can freely and legally create a Tetromino game with identical game play and rules as the original Tetris, provided that he uses his own codebase, art, and music. Which is what Tetrada was.

Marios, a student has complied with the order as he doesn't have the money to go against the order. I, myself am no trademark expert so I have no clue whether this game violated anything but what I do wonder is, with so many variations on this type of game why do some get chosen as violators of copyright and others don't? Perhaps they saw a threat in Tetrada since it was receiving really good feedback.

Source:wpcentral