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e-Scrabble gets Cease and Desist Order from Hasbro
Matthew Dull writes "Home-brewed e-Scrabble.com recently received a cease-and-desist order from Hasbro Inc., owners of the famous board game Scrabble. E-scrabble, home to over 100,000 active players, has been hosting up online versions of the game to happily addicted players for over a year now (maybe more), and only now does Hasbro come forth with a lawsuit. The creator of the site, known only as Jared, has posted the letter he received from Hasbro's lawyers. However common it may be, it always seems a tragedy when a big corporation stomps its heavy foot on a fledgling but very successful piece of web software that is close to many people's heart." (It's also the best online Scrabble game I've seen; Hasbro should pay Jared, not sue him.)
I am not a lawyer, but I have followed the similar Tetris issue.
Change the name from e-scrabble to something else, and the trademark claim is pretty much out the window. True, the rule sheet packaged with the game is copyrighted, but given Copyright Office publication FL108, I'm not so positive that copyright applies to the elements of a game itself.
Not so. The formula for Coke is a trade secret, not a patent or a copyright. If the formula ever leaked out, it would obviously be a secret no longer. There would be nothing (legally) that Coca Cola could do to you unless you were dumb enough to sell your drink under one of their trademarked names.
Scrabble is a registered trademark owned in the United States and Canada by Hasbro, Inc., and in Great Britain and everywhere else in the world, by J.W. Spear & Sons PLC, a subsidiary of Mattel.
Selchow & Righter, listed as the US owner on many of your boards, was bought -- in good health -- in 1986 by Coleco, which shortly went into bankruptcy due to the collapse of the market for their Cabbage Patch dolls. Coleco also led itself to bankruptcy in 1987 by losing a fortune on the Adam home computer flop, and the unexpected (to them) slowdown in Trivial Pursuit sales. (Trivial Pursuit was marketed in the US by Selchow & Righter). Scrabble was sold off to Milton Bradley, which was in turn gobbled up by Hasbro. Hasbro since has transferred Scrabble to its Parker Brothers division, itself a fierce Milton Bradley competitor before its absorption.
In North America, Hasbro needs it to appear that the public thinks that the term Scrabble refers to any game or related product Hasbro cares to label that way, while the popular board game is "Scrabble Crossword Game." Most people -- including Hasbro's own publication before their lawyers clamped down -- use the term Scrabble to refer to the game itself. To most, it is "the crossword game Scrabble" (although the "crossword game" part is far from almost everyone's mind), rather than "the Scrabble Crossword Game."
The magazine Financial World (July 8, 1996, p. 65) estimated the value of the Scrabble brand to Hasbro as $76 million, and 1995 sales under that brand at $39 million.