📰 In the well-known US case and one of the earliest video game cases, Atari, the holder of the copyright in the arcade game “Asteroids”, sued Amusement World for copyright infringement based on their video game “Meteors”. The case was dismissed by the court holding that while video games are protectable under audiovisual works, copyright protection does not extend to protect the underlying idea behind the video game. For example, in both games, the player has to combat space rocks and shape ships; but just because both games involve space rocks and space ships it does not mean that there existed copyright infringement. The gameplay, the scoring mechanism, the design of the rocks, spaceships, the audios involved will have to be examined.

🛈 More comparisons can be read here: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/547/222/1478917/