"protecting" games has been a problem, almost literally forever. On the one hand you want folks to benefit from there work, on the other hand sometimes a 'derivative' is a much much better game

Despite this argument's merit in general, it's a complete digression in this particular case. They didn't just heavily copy his game, but then turned around and named it similarly, registered a trademark, then turned that trademark against him. At what point do we stop pretending these people are anything but thieves?