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Facebook Scrabble Rip-off Capitalizes on Mattel's Lethargy
mlimber writes "The Facebook app Scrabulous was written by two Scrabble-loving brothers in India, has over 700,000 users, brings in about $25,000 per month in advertising revenue, and is in flagrant violation of copyright law. The corporate owners of Scrabble, Hasbro and Mattel, have threatened legal action against the creators and have made deals with Electronic Arts and RealNetworks to release official online versions of the game. But according to an NYTimes article, 'Scrabulous has already brought Scrabble a newfound virtual popularity that none of the game companies could have anticipated,' and according to one consultant to the entertainment industry, 'If you're Hasbro or Mattel, it isn't in your interest to shut this down.' Hasbro's partner RealNetworks is 'working closely' with the piratical brothers, but Mattel says that 'settling with the [brothers] would set a bad precedent' for other board games going online."
firstpost
Yeah, people are clueless about intellectual property. I dug up the original Reuters article this is referencing, assuming somewhere along the line someone copying it had managed to confuse copyright and trademarks. Sadly, it appears it was the original reporter that screwed up. He says they threatened with regard to copyrights, but all the direct quotes refer to trademarks, brands and "intellectual property." Never once does any spokesperson for Mattel reference copyright directly.
Note, trademarks are probably what are at issue since "Scrabulous" is easily confused with "Scrabble." The authors of the game should have picked something that did not reference the trademarked name.
Patents last 17 years. Scrabble is 70 years old. That would place its rules in the public domain.
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