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.)

Comments

Re:Uhhh

[shutdown -p now]

Would you think it is OK for a site to replicate Half-Life 2 in Java and make money off it?

Yes, it would, if the engine was written from scratch, and all data files are also clean re-make. After all, Carmack doesn't have anything against FreeDoom, which is exactly that kind of project.

I can understand how you can own a specific implementation of a game (that is, its code, binaries, and data files), but should you be able to own game concept and rules? I don't think so.

Re:Well, a better name would have helped

[syousef]

As someone who practices software development, I have to ask what happens if you externalize all these values.

Instead of having a set number for the value of a letter, make it a configurable parameter.

Instead of having a set score added for using all your pieces, make this configurable too.

Same goes for the board. You can use different graphic sets to draw the squares based on configurable parameters. You can use parameters to specify how large the board is, which squares are word and letter score multipliers, and how many multiples.

Then only with a particular configuration file would the game be identical to Scrabble.

You could change the name based on a parameter too for that matter.

Where would this leave the copyright situation? Would the software still be forfit? Or only the configuration file that makes it identical to scrabble? What if you let users upload their own configuration files, and left it up to the community to set up games based on their own configurations. Would Hasbro then have to sue the individuals for using this man's software to copy their game?

If you ask me copyright law is an absolute mess in the digital age. Hard as it is, we need to move away from a society where the first person who has an idea can block someone else from using it. Certainly they the people responsible for thinking of it should expect to benefit financially, but they should not be able to take all the benefit from the fruits of an implementor's labour nor block someone else from implementing the idea.

Copyright, trademark and patent law came about at a time when the ability to make copies was limited, as was education. We now copy things electronically in the blink of an eye, and hopefully overall we're more educated, meaning that several people may think of similiar ideas at the same time.