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Hasbro Sues Makers of Scrabble-Like Scrabulous
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."
I R S F T T O P S Q
DESPERATION: When you rearrange the letters: A ROPE ENDS IT
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?
Is there any serious doubt that Scrabulous infringes on Hasbro's intellectual property? The "creators" of Scrabulous don't even make a token effort to add some new intellectual component to their game. So yeah, while I love Scrabulous, and will probably re-join the "Save Scrabulous" Facebook group, I don't think that they really have a leg to stand on.
I wrote a couple of iPhone games that are clones of Yahtzee, and Battleship respectivly. One thing that worried me is getting sued like this. All I can do is hope to not rock their boat to much. I tried not to infringe on any trademarks, but who knows with these big ass companies.
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.
Is probably to ignore damages (or settle out of court in a way that the brothers aren't pissed off). They ought to then have Scrabulous disabled and then work with the brothers and EA to migrate Scrabulous users over to the official Scrabble app.
Free publicity+userbase >> damages
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
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.
Hasbro hasn't exactly tried hard to defend their patent until now. That may not bode well for them.
If you're right and the problem in question is a patents one, I think the best for EA right now would be to apply some dilatory tactics until software patents are abolished, then give the letters "F" and "U" to Hasbro.
The lawsuit wouldn't be quite so egregious if Hasbro offered their own online Scrabble game which wasn't extortionately priced, offered the same level of interactivity and community, and didn't suck all manner of ass.
Will they unsheathe the "lost sales" gun too, I wonder? If anything, Scrabulous made me more interested in Scrabble than any number of adverts or publicity by Hasbro ever has. Let's all go play on the Internet Scrabble Club instead.
Here's an interesting argument.
If the court concludes that the differences between a cardboard-n-wood game, and an electronic - internet power game having similar look and feel IS a diminuative difference - then this decision could be cited in every X-on-the-Internet patent as equally dissmissing the key feature of "Novelty".
In this country, the USPTO has granted endless claims for invention which are simply some traditional application - but rewired to work on the Internet. Mail (by Internet), Mail (by wireless ala Blackberry) Voice (over IP), shopping carts(on the internet), From buttons to telecommunications, shopping to sex, every aspect of our society has been "virtualized" and in every case won the argument that the virtualized version was novel and distinct from the real world counter-part.
Patents are only good for 15 years or so. so the workings of Scrabble are public domain (ie the addition and multiplication of points, placements etc... Only the name and logo are protect-able at this point. The broad net that would capture Scrabulous and scrabble would ensnare Pepsi-Cola and Coca-Cola, ABC and NBC.
If I were Scrabulous, I would counter sue for infringement on the new EA Scrabble version, on the grounds that the similarities between EA Scrabble and Scrabulous are greater than the similarities between Scrabble-the-Board-Game, and Scrabulous. In short, the addition of internet connectivity and facebook integration is a novel game which serves a customer base which is completely unavailble to a Boardgame due to distance - while the duplicate EA version serves exactly the same customer in exactly the same way.
AIK
How about Hasbro makes an application that isn't only available in America and Canada before they spoil our fun?
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.
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.
Actually, Hasbro withdrew their prior lawsuit against Scrabulous *until* such time as it could put its own service up on Facebook. Hasbro's version is now live, and they have recommenced their suit. Ergo, this is new news.
Way to pick the ONE article in the history of /. that is actually *not* a dupe.
So, I've been playing with FreeCiv and FreeCol, and I thought their commentary was interesting.
The question was posed: isn't this blatant copyright infringement?
And their answer was - maybe not. Although it's clear that you can copyright graphics and sounds, and you can copyright a story and a plot, and you can copyright code, and you can copyright maps - it isn't clear whether you can copyright a ruleset.
It isn't clear, for example, whether you can copyright the concept of turning a card sideways to increase a number used to play other cards. It isn't clear whether the concept of a 2-D character jumping from one platform to another, and losing a life if he doesn't make it, could have been copyrighted.
Maybe this will clear some things up. Scrabble, after all, has no real proprietary art beyond their logo maybe the font used on the tiles. It's just rules, and nothing more. Can you copyright a concept? (Actually, that sounds more like something you'd use a patent for).
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
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.
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?
Don't tase me Hasbro!
You can't copyright a game, but you *can* copyright a game board.
You also apparently can patent game mechanics.
Congratulations, you win today's prize for Worst Bad Car Analogy.
May I suggest you read up on trademark law, with particular reference to the question of whether a mark has to be identical to be considered infringing?
I wrote a Connect4 game for the iPhone called Touch4 (http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=283490535). I did some research on this and the name can be trademarked which is what MAY be the issue here. Like scrabble, the game play for connect four is centuries old and there cannot be infringement on that. My guess is that this is a negotiation tactic my Hasbro. I am watching this one closely. I wanted to name our pong game with Pong in the name but decided not to take the legal risk which is why it's called Touch Tennis (http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284442084). I think the other games with Pong in the name are at legal risk. Some of them aren't even pong, but just using "Pong" to get hits.
They can't, because Hasbro doesn't have world-wide rights to scrabble.
In most of the world, they don't.
In the rest of the world, the rights are owned by: J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England
Don't taze me, Hasbro