RISK on Google Maps Shut Down

mrokkam writes "Hasbro owns the copyrights for the game of Risk, as the guy who wrote the google maps based Risk found out. This was featured on slashdot earlier. However, he does not seem too discouraged and asks people to submit ideas for other games using google maps that will not have such legal wrangles." One thing this reminded me of is how cool Risk is. My office is now in its 3rd round... Africa will be mine!

Comments

Copyrights

[qbwiz]

I'm curious what Hasbro actually owns the copyrights on. They own the trademark on the name of the game, as the article says, and they own the copyright on the original game's rules, but do they own a copyright on any rephrasings of those rules?

If the game looks similar and plays the same, but does not have its rules phrased the same as the original game, is this a violation of copyright? I'm genuinely curious.

Litigious bastards

[plams]

Hasbro has a long history of suing amateurs who make games based on their games. I think they own a lot of classic arcade games too (e.g. from acquiring atari), so when someone makes, say, a Missile Command clone they also issue legal threats. Makes my inner baby cry.

Re:So don't use the name RISK?

[yeremein]

The Hasbro bark letter seems to complain that "unauthorized use of [elements of R*SK] is likely to dilute the distinctive quality of the R*SK game" (can't be too careful here). It seems to me that Hasbro would like to imply that they own the m*n*p*ly (is that a Hasbro trademark too?) on all R*SK-like games, but all that's legally enforceable is the R*SK name and actual written rules. I agree that a R*SK-like strategy game that didn't actually use the name "R*SK" or copy its rule book verbatim (and I don't know whether the offending game did that) should be legally okay. After all, there haven't been any lawsuits in the video game industry, where every single FPS that ever existed is exactly the same as every other one other than the name...

Re:Trademark

[networkBoy]

It is unnerving when you get one of those letters.
here's mine:
http://farmersreallysucks.com/cgi-bin/QAD_CMS.pl?p age=E1_First_Takedown.html
Anyway, my first reaction was "Oh Shit, Oh Shit, Oh Shit" then I took some time and realised that they were using baseless assertions, thus I got a little pissed. Finally I spent the next week looking up laws in US Title 15 and writing my rebuttal (the red text).
-nB