News surfaced last month that David Foley, CEO of UltraCade Technologies, had applied for the MAME trademark. On 14 March, Mr Foley abandoned the application while Nicola Salmoria's application became active. Highwaygames conducted an exclusive interview with David Foley to get the facts about why he had applied for the trademark. Despite several attempts to contact the MAME team Highwaygames was unable to get comments from them.
HIGHWAYGAMES In your official statement regarding your application for the Mame trademark, you said "we are making an effort to stamp out the commercial sales of M.A.M.E. based systems that advertise the ability to play thousands of games while relying on the customer to obtain the ROMs which can not legally be obtained." With this in mind, did you have the support of other manufacturers when you made the trademark application?
DAVID FOLEY We have the support of all of the major game companies, most of which we license games from, some which we don't but still work together with. All publishers see the illegal trade of game ROMs as damaging to their business, and none more than UltraCade as we are one of the only legitimate, licensed multi-game platforms, and the only legitimate, licensed multi-game platform with multiple publishers.
HIGHWAYGAMES You have received a lot of pressure and negative feedback because of your application for the M.A.M.E trademark, which I can see has now been abandoned. Why did you withdraw your application? Any regrets?
DAVID FOLEY We received no pressure, and very little negative feedback. All told, I received less than 300 email complaints, all from uneducated people who didn't bother to receive the facts of the situation. All along we have stated our intention was to get the mark out of the commercial marketplace, and protected under the original authors name. We attempted for months to get in contact with the original authors with no luck. Once we made a public statement about our filing, we were quickly contacted by the representatives of the "mame team" We worked with them and have gotten the mark filed under Nicola's name. Once that was done, we withdrew our application. Our withdrawal was only predicated on the registration by Nicola, and no other factors. I have no regrets about the situation as we accomplished our goal. I was disappointed by many of the newsgroups and so called reporters that didn't bother to check facts and reported wild rumors that had no basis in truth.
HIGHWAYGAMES Have you spoken with the M.A.M.E developers? I understand Nicola Salmoria has now filed for the M.A.M.E trademark, did you discuss this with him? If yes, will you be working together with him, or are you aware of his plans if he is granted the trademark?
DAVID FOLEY Of course, we are the ones that got Nicola to file. We are working closely with Nicola through Aaron Giles to get this done.
HIGHWAYGAMES Do you disagree with people selling M.A.M.E based systems at all? (I am aware MAME is 'free' and 'not for sale') Or do you only have a problem if the seller encourages the customer to obtain illegal ROMs?
DAVID FOLEY Yes I do. The MAME license agreement clearly states that it is not for commercial use. There are no resellers of MAME machines that do not play up the fact that you can play thousands of games. All of them encourage piracy of games. None of them educate the customers about legal issues. We all know that if you could not play 95% of the games offered legally, that these machines would not sell. Many of the resellers are clever and try and disguise how they market the product, but if you call anonymously (which we have done, including purchasing machines) every one of these companies will help you find illegal ROMs.
HIGHWAYGAMES What is your next step to try and stop ebay (and other) sellers circulating illegal software?
DAVID FOLEY We are constantly shutting down eBay auctions and sellers of illegal software. We are working on some of the higher profile sellers, including criminal arrests of companies that do not comply with halting of illegal distribution. We have setup a sister company in the UK to police Europe. We are pursuing both civil and criminal lawsuits against anyone that illegally sells game ROMs as this directly affects our business. We have no issue with MAME, or the concept of the emulation community. We never have. We have licensed technology from some of the communities members in the past. We have worked with the technology people from this community over the years. We built our business before MAME every existed and have watched the popularity of Retro gaming grow. We are the pioneers in this type of platform, and the leaders in the marketplace. We have spent millions of dollars in development fees and royalties to legally license and resell these games. We do not mind competition, we encourage it, it only makes our products better. However, we do mind an uneven playing field, and do not want to compete against companies who do not properly license the games which they sell or rely on to sell their products.
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