Monday Morning Quarterback: How to fix copying and plagiarism in games (Online)

Another week, another lawsuit. Yesterday, Spry Fox, the developers of the social game Triple Town, sued 6Waves for copy infringement, accusing the latter of copying their game with the release of Yeti Town on the iPhone. Last week, Nimblebit accused Zynga of copying their game Tiny Tower with the release of Dream Heights in the Canadian iTunes Store. Today Buffalo Studios just did the same about Bingo Blitz and Zynga Bingo. And in December, Zynga and Vostu settled a lawsuit whereby Zynga has sued Vostu for copying its game CityVille which Vostu counter-sued, claiming the pot-calling-the-kettle-black defense (that Zynga’s game was a copy of other games).

With so much outright copying and downright plagiarizing going in the world of games today, I would like to submit a Modest Proposal to solve the problem once and for all.