Talk:Atari Games Corp. v. Oman

Inaccuracies

I'm a J.D./Ph.D. candidate writing a dissertation on intellectual property in videogames. I recently wrote about this decision and I noticed this page had several inaccuracies and didn't capture the importance of this case in relation to prior precedent. (Copyright registrations for videogames had been used in litigation since the early '80s.) I'll try to come back to it when I have some additional time for another pass.Ludist (talk) 02:02, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Atari Games Corp. v. Oman/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Premeditated Chaos (talk · contribs) 01:39, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

I'll take this. I usually get around to reviewing within a week or so; feel free to ping me if I let it slip further than that. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 01:39, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Forgot to give you my reviewing schpiel! I review like an FAC in which I go from top to bottom and make suggestions as I go. I tend to focus on prose clarity and conciseness. If you disagree with a comment, I'm happy to discuss - unless it would make the article fail the GACR, I don't usually die on hills for my suggested changes.

• Thank you for the feedback. Ready for the next round of comments but no hurry. Jorahm (talk) 19:55, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

  Just so you don't worry, I probably won't be able to sit down and get back to this properly until Tuesday or Wednesday, sorry. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 20:13, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

  That's ok and take your time. This week might be busy for me too. Jorahm (talk) 22:45, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Lead

• The cite for the name isn't needed in the lead unless the name is somehow contentious
• The lead should almost certainly include when the lawsuit was launched and when the case was decided
• Might be worth including years for the other cases mentioned in the lead
• "Decades later, the United States Copyright Office cites" - the present tense is odd here. "Continues to cite" maybe, or "has continued to cite"?
• "with Jobs and Wozniak founding" - "with [verb]ing" is an awkward construction that usually gets called out at FAC. I don't want to cramp your style, but perhaps something in the vein of "Several participants in the case went on to become notable figures in their own right: Jobs and Wozniak founded Apple Inc., Bushnell founded Chuck E. Cheese, and Judge Ginsberg joined [maybe "was appointed to"?] the United States Supreme Court." This clarifies that the participants later became notable (not that the case is notable for the participation of these people who weren't super notable at the time) and also eliminates the "verbing".

• I tweaked the "notability of participants" sentences. The case itself isn't notable because of the people who were involved, it's a notable case and several people involved later became notable separately. Made a few other copyediting tweaks as well.

The work

• I might retitle this section Background for clarity
• "video game developer of arcade games" feels redundant. You could probably get away with "a developer of arcade video games", keeping the same links but piping them
• usually include the year for media on first mention, as in "Pong (1972)" and "Breakout (1975)"
• "based on Pong, where the player would use a paddle to hit a ball towards bricks." Gameplay is usually described in present tense. - try "in which the player uses"
• I might split paragraph 1 at "in the game" but I'm not going to insist if you don't like it
• "By 1976" - is it not clear when he left Atari?
• You can simplify that sentence to "In 1976, Jobs and Wozniak left Atari to found Apple."

Procedural history

• Let's have years for the cases please
• "Atari requested reconsideration..." you have "and" twice in this sentence. Can we reword?
• "The Register" - this is not a clear term from context, nor from common usage. Can we move the context from the subsequent paragraph into this one? Is there an article on this office/title/idk so we can link to it?
• If available, it might help to include dates throughout this section so the reader can get an idea of how lengthy (or not) this process is

Judicidal review

• Can the photo of RBG be cropped to include just her (or could we replace with another photo just of her)? It seems odd to have a photo of her with someone else who isn't involved in the case

• You didn't respond to my suggestion re: the image - any thoughts on that?

• I might split the paragraph at "but Atari succeeded" (I would also remove "but")
• "The register was ordered " - is this lowercase for a reason or just a typo?
• "After their successful appeal," - not sure this is needed, an intelligent reader will understand that the re-registration came after the successful appeal they just read about. You could maybe give a date instead

• No change here?

• "However" isn't needed

• Same

• You have "once again" three times in two sentences near the end of the Judicial review section

Appeal decision

• Section title is ambiguous as there were other previous appeals, maybe "Final review" or "Final appeal"?

Impact

• "Atari later sued" when?

• Nice addition of the iPhone clone takedowns.

• Should "breakout clone" not be "Breakout clone"?
• Years for cases please
• "According to the book" it isn't just the book though is it? Isn't that the argument advanced by the entire court case? Seems redundant
• "only that it requires independent creation" this clause reads oddly to me but I don't know how to fix it. "Only requiring independent creation" maybe, but I'm not sure the phrase "independent creation" really explains the requirement very well
• "The Journal of Intellectual..." who's writing? Same with The Chicago-Kent Journal, Nebraska Law Review, and IDEA later - journals don't write, people write in them.
• What is meant by "surpassing a "negative" definition"?
• I would reword the last paragraph's opening sentence to something like what I suggested for the lead

Okay, that's the end of my comments. No rush on when you respond. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 04:40, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

• Thanks for the review and I did what I could to fix the issues. I can keep going if there is anything else. Jorahm (talk) 14:52, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

• Basically good, I left a few comments above for stuff that didn't seem to have changed. None of it is GACR-breaking though so I'm going to pass it and leave it to you to determine what to do. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 20:24, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.