WebProNews

It's not been a good week for developers of well-established game knock-offs. Facebook favorite Scrabulous, a Scrabble-like game developed by two brothers in India was just removed in the UK and Australia, after already being forced down from the social network in North America last month.

Now a student named Noah Witherspoon that created an iPhone Tetris knock-off called simply "Tris," has been threatened with legal action by The Tetris Company. In what he refers to as "petty bullying," the company had Apple contact Witherspoon and had him pull the game from the iTunes App Store. Apple even told him that they'd take action themselves if he didn't comply.

Witherspoon thinks he would have what it takes to win a court case, but will not let the issue get that far because he doesn't have the time or money to pay for legal counsel. I'm no lawyer, but I really don't see how he would win this one. The game is clearly a Tetris rip off, and I don't mean in a Dr. Mario way.

It really couldn't be any more Tetris from the looks of it. Ars Technica provides side-by-side screenshots, and also notes that the official version of Tetris for the iPhone is available for $9.99.