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Hasbro Sues Makers of Scrabble-Like Scrabulous

Posted by timothy on from the cryin'-shame-continues dept.

Dekortage writes "As today's lawsuit indicates, Hasbro has apparently had enough of Scrabulous, the online word game remarkably similar to Scrabble. Filed in New York, Hasbro's suit is against Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, brothers from Kolkata, India, and asks the court to remove the Scrabulous application from Facebook, disable the Scrabulous.com web site, and grant damages and attorneys fees to Hasbro. Why did Hasbro tale so long to 'protect' its intellectual property rights in court? They waited 'in deference to the fans' until EA had launched the official Scrabble Facebook app earlier this month. EA's version has netted fewer than ten thousand players, versus Scrabulous' estimated 2.3 million. This was the next logical step for Hasbro after filing DMCA takedown notices against Scrabulous in January."

23 of 395 comments (clear)

  1. Why don't they just buy it? by diskofish · · Score: 5, Insightful

    EA's version has netted fewer than ten thousand players, versus Scrabulous' estimated 2.3 million. This was the next logical step for Hasbro...

    Doesn't seem very logical to me. Why don't they just buy it?

    1. Re:Why don't they just buy it? by MBCook · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That would cost money. This way they get money.

      That would have also validated the use of their game rules / board design (which are copyrighted or whatever). That could cost them their registration. Plus it would only encourage others to do this kind of thing to get some quick cash.

      --
      Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
    2. Re:Why don't they just buy it? by eln · · Score: 2, Insightful

      They probably don't want to appear as if they're rewarding people who they believe stole their intellectual property. That would just inspire others to create even more Scrabble clones in hope of getting bought by Hasbro.

    3. Re:Why don't they just buy it? by ddrichardson · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You know, there is a very odd attitude to copyright on Slashdot. We're not talking about patent trolling here, we are talking about a company which owns a trademark which is being infringed by another company. The infringement isn't even subtle, its a play on the very product they have adapted for online use. We aren't talking about a broad sue everyone who designs a word game attitude, we talking about defending a tradename - one which they are evidently in the process of cashing in on with EA.

      IANAL but this is about how customers identify with a product and a tradename and in this case there is a strong possibility that a large proportion of this 2.3 million users aren't aware there is a distinction. There are cases where a trademark can enter the lexicon, such as Hoover in the UK (for vacuum cleaner), I wouldn't have said this was one.

      --
      A thistle is a fat salad for an ass's mouth...
    4. Re:Why don't they just buy it? by spun · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You can't copyright a game. Hasbro is suing them over the trademark. Scrabulous should have used a name that doesn't sound like Scrabble, then there would be nothing Hasbro could do. Perhaps Scrabulous could change their name to Crapple.

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    5. Re:Why don't they just buy it? by 1u3hr · · Score: 3, Insightful
      You can copyright a game. I remember a few years ago, Hasbro sued Kellogg for having a card matching game on their cereal boxes as part of a Finding Nemo promotion, saying it too closely resembled their Memory card game. Wizards of the Coast even has a patent for "games, published in the form of trading cards, in which a player selects a collection of tradeable elements and uses that set to compete with other players", so any collectible card game has to pay them royalties.

      You start claiming "You can copyright a game", the you start talking about patents. Do you understand the (vast) difference?

  2. Scrabble by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What year was it invented? According to Wikipedia, more than 50 years ago. Sorry, but I do not feel any of the so-called intellectual property associated with this game should be in force except for the name. If they want to sue over trademark infringement over the name, fine. Anything else, no I do not believe my taxpayer dollars should be paying for a monopoly (another game that should be in the public domain by now) of 50+ years on this game.

    1. Re:Scrabble by sssssss27 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's my understanding that this is a trademark issue. Anyone can make a Scrabble style game, it can even have the same rules as Scrabble, it just can't be called Scrabble or anything similar enough to seem like it's Hasbro version of Scrabble.

    2. Re:Scrabble by vux984 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sorry, but I do not feel any of the so-called intellectual property associated with this game should be in force except for the name.

      Why not? Copyrights are in force for longer than 50 years. This is being argued as a copyright and trademark violation. And why shouldn't copyright apply to a game? It applies to restaurant menus, email memos, blog posts, napkin doodles, finger paintings, and so on. Why can't it apply to a board game?

      Granted, the idea of a crossword game where you construct words from pieces shouldn't be copy protected. But the precise rules, layout of a particular board, etc should be.

      There are lots of scrabble-like games that should not be found infringing... but scrabulous?

      Scrabulous has double and tripple letter and word scores in the same places on a board that is the same size and shape, from a set of pieces with the same letter frequency, and the game follows exactly the same rules.

      It looks like scrabble. It plays like scrabble. Its even almost-but-not-quite called scrabble.

      How is that different from writing a novel entitled Lord of the Bracelets, you know the one? Its about the Dark Lord Soron who forged 9 bracelets for men, 7 for dwarfs (not dwarves), and 3 for elfs (not elves), and one master bracelet for himself, which was lost in a great war and then found by Seegul... from whom it was stolen by Billy and then passed on to his adopted nephew Frobo...who carried it to Riverdell with his friend Samsmart while being pursued by braceletwraiths... and from there a great journey was undertaken by the council to form the Fellowship of the Bracelets to carry the ring to Doom Mountain and destroy it...

      There's writing fantasy that was influenced and inspired by Tolkien... and then there is Lord of the Bracelets.

      Like my "Lord of the Bracelets" Scrabulous deserves to be found infringing and shut down.

      If they want to sue over trademark infringement over the name, fine.

      That's part of it too.

  3. Re:This is what I am worried about.. by elemnt14 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Now that you mentioned it, they are going to be commin' a knocking at your door any minute now.

  4. Does Hasbro even make games still? by feedayeen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Every time I hear the name Hasbro, it is suing someone for infringing upon some old game that they either made or bought decades ago.

  5. Yes, it's too old. by IdahoEv · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is there any serious doubt that Scrabulous infringes on Hasbro's intellectual property?

    Hell yes there's doubt. Scrabble was designed and first marketed in 1938. By any reasonable definition of the "protected for a limited time" aspect of intellectual property principle, Scrabble should be in the public domain by now.

    Inventing or creating something should not give you, your heirs, and the people who bought it from you, and the people who bought it from them the right to make exclusive profit off it for the rest of time.

    The dude who invented Scrabble is long dead. Time to let others play.

    Can you imagine if we we still had to pay royalties to whatever company bought the rights to Shakespeare's estate every time a school drama club wanted to put on Hamlet?

    --
    I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
    1. Re:Yes, it's too old. by fishbowl · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Thank you. It will be a while before the rights of his estate are rescinded and his copyrights enter the public domain.
      Agree or disagree with copyright duration, this is the issue.

      --
      -fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
    2. Re:Yes, it's too old. by houghi · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Can you imagine if we we still had to pay royalties to whatever company bought the rights to Shakespeare's estate every time a school drama club wanted to put on Hamlet?

      If that company would be named Disney, I unfortunatly could imagine that very well.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
  6. I'd have more sympathy for the Scrabulous people.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If they hadn't used the word "Scrabble" in the URL for the single player - aka, practice - version of the game up until Hasbro started making noise; for all I know, they may have used Scrabble elsewhere on their site or in their meta tags. That alone should merit trademark infringement.

    Sorry, I'm very much for things like abolition of software patents and shortening of copyright terms - and I'm aware that game play cannot be patented - however these guys were obviously trying to benefit from the image of Scrabble. They went so far as to use the term to refer to their game, nevermind trying to actively dissuade people from confusing. The makers of Scrabulous acted unethically and I believe illegally.

  7. Re:I love Scrabulous, but.... by Citizen+of+Earth · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is there any serious doubt that Scrabulous infringes on Hasbro's intellectual property?

    And what intellectual property would that be? The trademark is pretty much the only claim they can make, but I think that most reasonable adults would read "Scrabulous" as meaning "Scrabble(TM)-like, but not Scrabble(TM)". Copyrights would only apply to their artwork and specific wording of the rules. You can't trademark facts. And any patents would have expired decades ago.

  8. Buy it from Whom? by Nymz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Doesn't seem very logical to me. Why don't they just buy it?

    1) Trademark your game name
    2) Just buy (it) your trademark from... those violating your trademark?
    3) Profit!!!

    With super-human logic skills like that, I imagine your post getting moderated up by others with an equally stuning level of logic. I also imagine the corollary to be true, as I haven't seen moderation points in years.

    1. Re:Buy it from Whom? by 75th+Trombone · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Your post does not describe this situation. This does:

      1) Trademark your game name
      2) Let someone else invoke it while doing lots of cool stuff and acquiring millions of users
      3) Buy the millions of users at a really good price by making the someone else choose between a buy-out and a lawsuit.
      4) Profit!!!

      Makes more sense, yeah?

      --
      The United States of America: We do what we must because we can.
  9. Re:I love Scrabulous, but.... by DerekLyons · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So, if Scrabulous didn't copy the Scrabble instructions and didn't copy the graphical elements, they should be fine.

    And that's the problem - to some extent they do both, to the point where the game is recognizably Scrabble with the serial numbers badly filed off.

  10. So, what does it infringe? by MattW · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I own and like Scrabble. Online, I tend to play Yahoo's "Literati" game. I've got my iphone dev kit, and this made me wonder - what sort of IP would it infringe?

    You can certainly copyright rules and such for a board game, but if they're rewritten, that's taken care of. I figure you can probably copyright a board design, but the look and feel can be reworked without changing gameplay.

    You can trademark the name - and maybe they think "Scrabulous" is infringing.

    Lastly, there's gameplay patents. Scrabble apparently had no patents aside from a patent on an indicator in the corners of tiles so you could tell how they had been played after the fact without lifting the tile. And it was 1956 and expired in the 70s.

    So, I guess what I want to know is: what are they infringing? My guess is the name (trademark) or the board design (copyright), but who knows?

  11. Re:I love Scrabulous, but.... by SirMeliot · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There was a neat version of Scrabble many years ago on the ZX Spectrum. (3.5 MHz Z80 CPU 48KB memory)
    You'd have to try really hard to make Scrabble taxing for a PC to run.

  12. Re:I love Scrabulous, but.... by lgw · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You Can't copyright the rules of a game, but you *can* copyright a game board (just like you can copyright any drawing). Scrabulous infringes on this copyright, which was a big mistake and will probably mean its end.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  13. Re:I love Scrabulous, but.... by AmericanInKiev · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No,
    To be recognized as a car, a soda, or a bottle of stomach acid reliever does not mean you have infringed on the copyright of Ford, Pepsi, or Pepto-Bismol.

    That it WORKS the same way is a patent question an long expired.

    On the other hand, if you have a trench-coat lined with cheap watches which you are trying to pass off as $2K Rolex timepieces, you have infringed.

    Did facebook players say ooh- that looks like a real cardboard scrabble board game by Hasbro - so I'll play it,

    Or did they say - gee that looks like a Crossword-based puzzle game, like the one I played as a kid - so I know the rules...

    I suggest that the appeal to customers is that they know how to UTILIZE the game because they recognize its form and function - far more than because they trust Hasbro for all their gaming needs.

    AIK