RIP KCM

greglas

If you're interested in Pac-Man, you might have heard of K.C.Munchkin. Then again, maybe you haven't.  K.C. Munchkin had a brief existence, perhaps due to the fact that he infringed the copyright in the much more famous Pac-Man, according to the 1982 decision of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Atari v. North American Philips Consumer Elecs., 672 F.2d 607. 

What I love about this early videogame case is the novelty of the encounter between law and video games: how the court struggles with the new medium, what things it feels the need to scare-quote, and how it compares the creative expression.  For some reason (perhaps related to the ultimate outcome?) Pac-Man does not take his proper name -- he is a gobbler, just like K.C. Munchkin, with a "V-shaped aperture which opens and closes in mechanical fashion like a mouth."  The court's close reading of the two games is set forth below.  In its attempt to essentialize the creative core of Pac-Man, isn't this an early piece of video game criticism? 

Here's how the court describes Pac-Man:

The copyrighted version of PAC-MAN is an electronic arcade maze-chase game. Very basically, the game "board," which appears on a television-like screen, consists of a fixed maze, a central character (expressed as a "gobbler"), four pursuit characters (expressed as "ghost monsters"), several hundred evenly spaced pink dots which line the pathways of the maze, four enlarged pink dots ("power capsules") approximately located in each of the maze's four corners, and various colored fruit symbols which appear near the middle of the maze during the play of the game.

Using a "joy stick," the player guides the gobbler through the maze, consuming pink dots along the way.  The monsters, which roam independently within the maze, chase the gobbler. Each play ends when a monster catches the gobbler, and after three plays, the game is over.  If the gobbler consumes a power capsule, the roles reverse temporarily: the gobbler turns into the hunter, and the monsters become vulnerable.  The object of the game is to score as many points as possible by gobbling dots, power capsules, fruit symbols, and monsters.

...

At the start of the game, the gobbler character is located centrally near the bottom of the maze. That figure is expressed as a simple yellow dot, somewhat larger than the power capsules, with a V-shaped aperture which opens and closes in mechanical fashion like a mouth as it travels the maze. Distinctive "gobbling" noises accompany this action.  If fate (or a slight miscalculation) causes the gobbler to fall prey to one of the monsters, the action freezes, and the gobbler is deflated, folding back on itself, making a sympathetic whining sound, and disappearing with a star-burst.

The four monster characters are identical except that one is red, one blue, one turquoise, and one orange.  They are about equal in size to the gobbler, but are shaped like bell jars.  The bottom of each figure is contoured to stimulate three short appendages which move as the monster travels about the maze. Their most distinctive feature is their highly animated eyes, which appear as large white circles with blue irises and which "look" in the direction the monster is moving.  At the start of each play, the monsters are located side-by-side in the corral, bouncing back and forth until each leaves through the opening.  Unlike the gobbler, they do not consume the dots, but move in a prearranged pattern about the maze at a speed approximately equal to that of the gobbler. When the gobbler consumes a power capsule and the roles reverse, the monsters panic: a siren-like alarm sounds, they turn blue, their eyes contract into small pink dots, a wrinkled "mouth" appears, and they immediately reverse direction (moving at a reduced speed).  When this period of vulnerability is about to end, the monsters warn the player by flashing alternately blue and white before returning to their original colors. But if a monster is caught during this time, its body disappears, and its original eyes reappear and race back to the corral. Once in the corral, the monster quickly regenerates and reenters the maze to resume its pursuit of the gobbler.

Here's K.C. Munchkin:

The gobbler in K. C. Munchkin initially faces the viewer and appears as a round blue-green figure with horns and eyes.  The gobbler normally has an impish smile, but when a monster attacks it, its smile appropriately turns to a frown.  As it moves about the maze, the gobbler shows a somewhat diamond-shaped profile with a V-shaped mouth which rapidly opens and closes in a manner similar to PAC-MAN's gobbler. A distinctive "gobbling" noise also accompanies this movement.  When the gobbler stops, it turns around to face the viewer with another grin.  If captured by a monster, the gobbler also folds back and disappears in a star-burst.  At the start of each play, this character is located immediately above the corral. If successful in consuming the last dot, the munchkin turns to the viewer and chuckles.

K. C. Munchkin's three ghost monsters appear similar in shape and movement to their PAC-MAN counterparts. They have round bodies (approximately equal in size to the gobbler) with two short horns or antennae, eyes, and three appendages on the bottom.  The eyes are not as detailed as those of the PAC-MAN monsters, but they are uniquely similar in that they also "look" in the direction in which the monster is moving.  Although slightly longer, the "legs" also move in a centipede-like manner as the monster roams about the maze. The similarity becomes even more pronounced when the monsters move vertically because their antennae disappear and their bodies assume the more bell jar-like shape of the PAC-MAN monsters. Moreover, the monsters are initially stationed inside the corral (albeit in a piggyback rather than a side-by-side arrangement) and exit into the maze as soon as play commences.

K. C. Munchkin's expression of the role reversal also parallels that in PAC-MAN.  When the gobbler consumes one of the power capsules, the vulnerable monsters turn purple and reverse direction, moving at a slightly slower speed.  If caught by the gobbler, a monster "vanishes": its body disappears and only white "eyes" and "feet" remain to indicate its presence.  Instead of returning directly to the corral to regenerate, the ghost-like figure continues to wander about the maze, but does not affect the play. Only if the rotating corral happens to open up toward the monster as it travels one of the adjacent passageways will the monster re-enter the corral to be regenerated.  This delay in regeneration allows the gobbler more time to clear the maze of dots. When the period of vulnerability is about to end, each monster flashes its original color as a warning.

There are only twelve dots in K. C. Munchkin as opposed to over two hundred dots in PAC-MAN.  Eight of those dots are white; the other four are power capsules, distinguished by their constantly changing color and the manner in which they blink.  In K. C. Munchkin, the dots are randomly spaced, whereas in PAC-MAN, the dots are uniformly spaced.  Furthermore, in K. C. Munchkin, the dots are rectangular and are always moving.  As the gobbler munches more dots, the speed of the remaining dots progressively increases, and the last dot moves at the same speed as the gobbler. In the words of the district court, "the last dot ... cannot be caught by overtaking it; it must be munched by strategy." At least initially, one power capsule is located in each of the maze's four corners, as in PAC-MAN.

From other facts mentioned in the case, it seems clear that the designers of KCM wanted to make something similar to Pac-Man, but with sufficient differences and improvements that would allow them to escape infringement liabilty.  The appeals court, however, saw this intent to design around the literal Pac-Man as simply more evidence that the defendants were copying Pac-Man. 

The Atari opinion, by the way, is still cited with approval as setting the standard for video game infringement analysis in the Seventh Circuit.  See, e.g., Incredible Techs. v. Virtual Techs., 74 USPQ2d 1031 (2005).

For more information, including screenshots of the ill-fated KCM, see this article on Gamespy.