If Ikegami Sued Nintendo Over Donkey Kong. . .

[ColecoFan1981]

I've gotten around to thinking: If Ikegami had sued Nintendo over the program code to Donkey Kong. . . then I wonder if Nintendo's other hired hands including SRD (Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda) and TOSE (Kid Icarus, Eggsplode/Short Order) could one of these days sue Nintendo as well for compensation?

I also wonder if Nintendo being sued by Ikegami over the arcade DK and DK Jr. coding, besides having dissected the original DK code for DK Jr., was because Nintendo didn't take a good look at the contract before the first DK was finished? It is apparent that buried deep in the contract was a clause that ultimately meant all source code for games programmed by Ikegami, regardless of title or publisher, had become property of Ikegami, and in the case of DK and DK Jr., it was a major blow to Nintendo. I compare this turn of events to the contract between Stax Records and Atlantic Records and what had happened to the (pre-1968) Stax catalog after Atlantic had been sold in 1967 to Warner Music Group.

~Ben