For what it's worth, you're always at risk of being sued.

QFE -- Most tetris clones have been shut down simply by the threat of a lawsuit, even though the Tetris company would likely lose in court, because the 'clone' developer hasn't had the money to hire a lawyer to defend themselves.

Trademarks cover names, so if I make "Hodgman's Risk", then I'm infringing on the "Risk" trademark.

Copyright covers "creative works", which usually just means art/sounds. In that tetris ruling, they also covered what basically amounts to the User-Interface layout as a creative work, and that's what sunk the defendant -- they copied they way in which the (unprotected) mechanics were conveyed to the player via the UI.
IMHO, that's a very grey ruling as it arguably violates the precedent of Scènes à faire (i.e. it's hard to express the rules of tertis without using that kind of UI layout), and different laywers/judges could've resulted in a different ruling.

For what it's worth, you're always at risk of being sued.

Most tetris clones have been shut down simply by the threat of a lawsuit, even though the Tetris company would likely lose in court, because the 'clone' developer hasn't had the money to hire a lawyer to defend themselves.

Trademarks cover names, so if I make "Hodgman's Risk", then I'm infringing on the "Risk" trademark.

Copyright covers "creative works", which usually just means art/sounds. In that tetris ruling, they also covered what basically amounts to the User-Interface layout as a creative work, and that's what sunk the defendant -- they copied they way in which the (unprotected) mechanics were conveyed to the player via the UI.
IMHO, that's a very grey ruling as it arguably violates the precedent of Scènes à faire (i.e. it's hard to express the rules of tertis without using that kind of UI layout), and different laywers/judges could've resulted in a different ruling.

For what it's worth, you're always at risk of being sued.

Most tetris clones have been shut down simply by the threat of a lawsuit, even though the Tetris company would likely lose in court, because the 'clone' developer hasn't had the money to hire a lawyer to defend themselves.

Trademarks cover names, so if I make "Hodgman's Risk", then I'm infringing on the "Risk" trademark.

Copyright covers "creative works", which usually just means art/sounds. In that tetris ruling, they also covered what basically amounts to the User-Interface layout as a creative work, and that's what sunk the defendant -- they copied they way in which the (unprotected) mechanics were conveyed to the player via the UI.
IMHO, that's a very grey ruling as it arguably violates the precedent of Scènes à faire, and different laywers/judges could've resulted in a different ruling.

For what it's worth, you're always at risk of being sued.

Most tetris clones have been shut down simply by the threat of a lawsuit, even though the Tetris company would likely lose in court, because the 'clone' developer hasn't had the money to hire a lawyer to defend themselves.

Trademarks cover names, so if I make "Hodgman's Risk", then I'm infringing on the "Risk" trademark.

Copyright covers "creative works", which usually just means art/sounds. In that tetris ruling, they also covered what basically amounts to the User-Interface layout as a creative work, and that's what sunk the defendant -- they copied they way in which the (unprotected) mechanics were conveyed to the player via the UI.
IMHO, that's a very grey ruling, and different laywers/judges could've resulted in a different ruling.

For what it's worth, you're always at risk of being sued.

Most tetris clones have been shut down simply by the threat of a lawsuit, even though the Tetris company would likely lose in court, because the 'clone' developer hasn't had the money to hire a lawyer to defend themselves.

Trademarks cover names, so if I make "Hodgman's Risk", then I'm infringing on the "Risk" trademark.

Copyright covers "creative works", which usually just means art/sounds. In that tetris ruling, they also covered what basically amounts to the User-Interface layout as a creative work, and that's what sunk the defendant -- they copied they way in which the (unprotected) mechanics were conveyed to the player via the UI.

For what it's worth, you're always at risk of being sued.

Most tetris clones have been shut down simply by the threat of a lawsuit, even though the Tetris company would likely lose in court, because the 'clone' developer hasn't had the money to hire a lawyer to defend themselves.

Trademarks cover names, so if I make "Hodgman's Risk", then I'm infringing on the "Risk" trademark.

Copyright covers "creative works", which usually just means art/sounds. In that tetris ruling, they also covered what basically amounts to the User-Interface layout as a creative work, and that's what sunk the defendant.