The Tetris Company

The Tetris Company LLC, aka TTC, is based in Hawaii and is managed by Henk Rogers. The company currently owns the trademark to the game "Tetris", originally conceived by Alexey Pajitnov. "Tetris" is widely considered one of the most popular games ever released, which is reflected by its mobile edition being the top seller in the industry. [http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=19354] . The company licenses the "Tetris" trademark to video game development companies and maintains a set of guidelines that each licensed game must meet. [http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/specialArt.cfm?artid=11267 Tetris from the Top] ]

TTC had a moment of fame in the late 90s when it tried to get every freeware and shareware version of "Tetris" off the market by sending out cease-and-desist letters claiming both trademark and copyright infringement [Andrew James Bernarz, December 24th 1997 [http://www.abednarz.net/email1.html The Tetris Company Letter #1] ] . Creators of "Tetris" clones determined that the company has no valid legal basis to claim rights to any tetromino game that does not infringe on the "Tetris" name trademark, since copyright "look-and-feel" suits have not stood up in court in the past ("Lotus v. Borland"), and because the letters made no patent claims. [Bjorn Stenberg [http://lwn.net/Articles/200179/ A trademark cease-and-desist for Rockbox's Tetrox] ]

In August of 2008, Apple Computer removed "Tris", a version of Tetris from its online iTunes store. The software author had written a tetromino game for the iPhone 3G without any authorization from The Tetris Company. [ [http://kotaku.com/5041686/iphone-tetris-clone-tris-pulled-from-app-store iphone tetris clone tris pulled from app store] on Kotaku]

External links

* [http://www.tetris.com/ The Tetris Company, LLC.]
* [http://www.blueplanetsoftware.com/ Blue Planet Software] , 50 percent owner and the representative of The Tetris Company

References