I should note that we didn't pour 100% of available resources into suing those assholes as a business decision, because we were busy developing our own software.
We had a customer who complained, off-hand, that a Chinese company had ripped off their (carrier-grade) router design down to the English silk screening on the PCB's.
> The makers even tried to copy the stampings and markings from their original source Martini. Backwards letters and misspellings of the markings are common. The majority of Khyber Pass Martinis I've seen have typos that are very similar. One of the most common is to have the "N" in "Enfield" backwards...likely because one "Master Copy" of an original Martini was made, then passed around for others to makes copies from. The erroneous marking was then faithfully copied from one weapon to the next.
You can actually patent them[1]:
A patent was granted to Wizards of the Coast in 1997 for "a novel method
of game play and game components that in one embodiment are in the
form of trading cards" that includes claims covering games whose rules
include many of Magic's elements in combination, including concepts such
as changing orientation of a game component to indicate use (referred to
in the Magic and Vampire: The Eternal Struggle rules as "tapping") and
constructing a deck by selecting cards from a larger pool.[9] The patent
has aroused criticism from some observers, who believe some of its
claims to be invalid.[10] In 2003, the patent was an element of a larger
legal dispute between Wizards of the Coast and Nintendo, regarding trade
secrets related to Nintendo's Pokémon Trading Card Game. The legal
action was settled out of court, and its terms were not disclosed.[11]
Put Papa Pear Saga next to Peggle and say that with a straight face.
"The debate here revolves around Pac-Avoid [...] The game strongly resembles another game called ScamperGhost. The details of the situation are complex, but the bottom line is that we should never have published Pac-Avoid. We have taken the game down from our site, and we apologise for having published it in the first place.
Let me be clear: This unfortunate situation is an exception to the rule. King does not clone games, and we do not want anyone cloning our games.
Before we launch any game, we do a thorough search of other games in the marketplace and review relevant trademark filings to ensure that we are not infringing anyone else’s IP. We have launched hundreds of games. Occasionally, we get things wrong. When we do, we take appropriate action."
I'm pretty sure this is an admission that they cloned the game. We know it, they know it, they haven't outright said "we cloned the game", but this is as good as. Unless I'm misreading it, in which case they should correct that statement.
Given that, it would be interesting to know what legal avenues are open to the original developer now. If another party was willing to provide financial support for a lawsuit, surely it's a slam-dunk?
I think the whole issue of whether or not candy crush can be considered a clone is vastly different; obviously, the core mechanism is pretty much (or exactly) the same as in other games, but that mechanism is very straightforward. And I'm not sure the visuals are so blatantly a rip-off. Moreover, I'm unaware of any evidence from a third-party that has revealed King commissioned them to create a clone.
[1] http://about.king.com/about/our-approach-to-ip