{"id":131673,"date":"2025-03-13T22:59:25","date_gmt":"2025-03-13T22:59:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/business\/legal\/no-infringement-of-nonfiction-work-by-makers-of-tetris-film-court-uses-wrong-analysis-to-reach-the-right-result\/"},"modified":"2025-03-13T22:59:25","modified_gmt":"2025-03-13T22:59:25","slug":"no-infringement-of-nonfiction-work-by-makers-of-tetris-film-court-uses-wrong-analysis-to-reach-the-right-result","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=131673","title":{"rendered":"No Infringement of Nonfiction Work by Makers of Tetris Film \u2013 Court Uses Wrong Analysis to Reach the Right Result"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

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Ackerman v. Pink<\/a><\/em> asks how much of a written history can be claimed as proprietary by the author of that history.\u00a0\u00a0 The answer:\u00a0 Not much.\u00a0 It is black letter that the author of a non-fiction work cannot prevent others from using historical facts in some other work \u2013 even if those historical facts are known only because of the author\u2019s independent research.\u00a0 Copyright covers only the author\u2019s expression <\/em>of the research, not the research itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ackerman is interesting because the analysis the court uses to separate the historical fact from the author\u2019s expression is misplaced \u2013 even though the Court appears to have reached the right conclusion.<\/p>\n

Daniel Ackerman, the author, sued several entities claiming that the film Tetris<\/em> (the \u201cFilm\u201d) infringed his copyright in a book he wrote about the video game Tetris \u2013 The Tetris Effect: The Game that Hypnotized the World<\/em> (the \u201cBook\u201d).\u00a0 The Book purports to be a non-fiction history of the development of the video game Tetris.\u00a0 The Film also purports to tell the same story \u2013 albeit with some dramatic embellishments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The opinion by district judge Katherine Polk Failla recites the relatively vanilla proposition that historical facts cannot be claimed by an author of a non-fiction work of authorship.\u00a0 So far, so good.\u00a0 The problem, however, is where the court compares certain purportedly historic scenes in the Book with how they are portrayed fictionally in the Film in an effort to separate the facts from the expression.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The court recounts several factual<\/em> differences between the portrayal of historical scenes in the Book and the dramatization in the Film to hold that the expression of the former is not copied by the latter.\u00a0 For example, the Book describes one of the characters pitching Tetris to Sega in Japan.\u00a0 In the Movie, however, there are several differences including the fact the scene takes place in Seattle.\u00a0 Given that that historical facts described in the Book are not protected by copyright, whether the Film changed some of the facts should be immaterial to the court\u2019s analysis.\u00a0 To the extent the author of the Book described certain scenes exactly as they happened, <\/em>the Film was within its rights to portray those same facts as they happened.\u00a0 Nonetheless, the court\u2019s analysis, to some degree, depends on these factual differences to hold that the Film does not copy the Book author\u2019s expression.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Court went on to compare the \u201ctotal concept and overall feel of the two works\u201d by focusing on the organization and focus of the Book and Film.\u00a0 This framework does seem to separate Book author\u2019s expression from the unprotected historical facts.\u00a0 For example, the court noted that \u201cthe Book jumps through time to provide as much background and context as possible for the people and events it portrays, the Film proceeds largely chronologically.\u201d\u00a0 The court, however, could find no evidence that the Film somehow misappropriated the way the author \u201cselected, coordinated, and arranged the facts in his Book.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Judge Polk Failla reached the right result (in our view), her focus on the difference in the facts unnecessarily muddies the water on separating protected expression from something underlying that expression that is in the public domain.\u00a0 A subsequent author who wishes to write a book or make a movie about an historical event should not be required to change the historical facts to avoid a finding that they copied the original author\u2019s expression \u2013 even though the makers of the Film chose to do so here.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ackerman v. Pink asks how much of a written history can be claimed as proprietary by the author of that history.\u00a0\u00a0 The answer:\u00a0 Not much.\u00a0 It is black letter that the author of a non-fiction work cannot prevent others from using historical facts in some other work \u2013 even if those historical facts are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":131674,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[10990,410,989,45982,11589,5307,6251,1666,57174,418,6773],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-131673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-legal","tag-analysis","tag-court","tag-film","tag-infringement","tag-makers","tag-nonfiction","tag-reach","tag-result","tag-tetris","tag-work","tag-wrong"],"yoast_head":"\nNo Infringement of Nonfiction Work by Makers of Tetris Film \u2013 Court Uses Wrong Analysis to Reach the Right Result - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=131673\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"No Infringement of Nonfiction Work by Makers of Tetris Film \u2013 Court Uses Wrong Analysis to Reach the Right Result - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\" Ackerman v. Pink asks how much of a written history can be claimed as proprietary by the author of that history.\u00a0\u00a0 The answer:\u00a0 Not much.\u00a0 It is black letter that the author of a non-fiction work cannot prevent others from using historical facts in some other work \u2013 even if those historical facts are […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=131673\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-03-13T22:59:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Movie-projector-iStock-159755074.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"300\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=131673#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=131673\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/#\/schema\/person\/b85e3c3dc0e1daea076524dc8810c371\"},\"headline\":\"No Infringement of Nonfiction Work by Makers of Tetris Film \u2013 Court Uses Wrong Analysis to Reach the Right Result\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-03-13T22:59:25+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=131673\"},\"wordCount\":603,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=131673#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Movie-projector-iStock-159755074.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Analysis\",\"Court\",\"Film\",\"Infringement\",\"Makers\",\"NonFiction\",\"Reach\",\"Result\",\"Tetris\",\"Work\",\"Wrong\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Legal\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=131673#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=131673\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=131673\",\"name\":\"No Infringement of Nonfiction Work by Makers of Tetris Film \u2013 Court Uses Wrong Analysis to Reach the Right Result - 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