StickyCoding vs Firemint

While going through the usual Android sites I tend to read during my morning habit of drinking a bunch of energy drinks, I happened to notice some news about recent (Pocket Gamers) Game of the Year winner Firemint, who won with their game Flight Control, having just issued a C&D Order to StickyCoding in regards to their game, Flying Aces.

This Android Life posted this article and I'm not going to go through the entire thing here as you can go read it over on their site but the quick version of what's going on is this: Firemint has issued a C&D Order to StickyCoding to immediately stop sales of their game, Flying Aces because it's 'striking similar' to their game, Flight Control.

StickyCoding claims they have not used any part of Firemints coding, graphics or overall assets from Flight Control. This leads me to believe that it's just because it looks/plays similar to Flight Control but what game from this genre doesn't? There are about 4 or 5 other types of flight controlling games out there on the Android market so does this mean they all can expect a C&D Order from Firemint?

Personally I think the entire thing is ridiculous. This type of game has been around for awhile and I highly doubt Firemint can claim they came up with the idea for this sort of game before anyone else did. Just because something is similar in game play doesn't make it a rip from another game, it's just following the style of game play that particular genre offers. If StickyCoding didn't use any code, graphics or overall assets from Firemint's game then the legality of this C&D Order is definitely in question. If this is actually upheld then we could see a lot more of these C&D Orders start to appear in both directions.

It's been awhile since we saw some C&D Orders appearing in the news. The last time was when all the DOOM and related type of ports were all issued C&D Orders and taken off the Android market. Hopefully this doesn't start happening again. One thing to note, I find this extremely amusing that this happened right after Firemint won Best Game of the Year over at Pocket Gamer.

You can go to This Android Life's site to read their article about it as well as head over to Google groups to read the thread StickyCoding started about this whole ordeal including the actual emails they have received thus far. I'll post any updates when I see them roll in.

Source: This Android Life

Developer Sites: StickyCoding | Firemint