1983), was a legal case where the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit found that Artic violated Midway's copyright in their arcade games Pac-Man and Galaxian.

The dispute arose when Artic began to distribute an alleged clone of Pac-Man, and a circuit board that could speed-up the gameplay of Galaxian.

The district court disagreed, finding that both games were protected as audiovisual works, and enjoined Artic from distributing their infringing hardware.

The issue of derivative works has provoked further discussion from legal theorists, arguing whether Artic's modifications of Galaxian actually copied anything from the original game.

[7] Artic International began selling circuit boards that could be used inside other game machines, including an alleged clone of Pac-Man, as well as a "speed-up kit" that accelerates the gameplay for Galaxian.

[15] District Judge Bernard Decker granted an injunction against Artic,[19] denying their motion for summary judgement, and preventing them manufacturing or distributing circuit boards that infringed both Pac-Man and Galaxian.

[15] The court acknowledged that the framers of the Copyright Act did not anticipate the issues raised by electronic games,[18] but rejected Artic's arguments.

Midway v. Artic is one of the first copyright decisions where a computer program stored in hardware memory was sufficient to qualify as a fixed creative work.

[15] In Play/Write, Scott Nelson argues that this has implications for copyright ownership in procedurally generated games such as Diablo, Dwarf Fortress, and Minecraft.

[22][25] Thomas Hemnes criticized this opinion about commercial impact in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, noting that the speed-up kit could not function without first owning a working version of the original game.

[17] Pamela Samuelson made a similar criticism in the Georgetown Law Journal, that the injunction against the speed-up kit may have hindered competition in the video game industry.