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."

Comments

My turn?

[pbhj]

I R S F T T O P S Q

Re:My turn?

[felipekk]

They are mad because you get more points for making "Scrabulous" than for "Scrabble".

Re:My turn?

[TheRaven64]

Scrabble is a noun and a verb as well as a proper noun, and so is allowed. Since it is eight letters long, you are most likely to use up all of your letters spelling it and so you get 50 extra points. Scrabulous is a proper noun and not a real word, so it is not allowed.

So in Scrabble-like terms...

[Anonymous Coward]

DESPERATION: When you rearrange the letters: A ROPE ENDS IT

Why don't they just buy it?

[diskofish]

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?

Re:Why don't they just buy it?

[MBCook]

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.

Re:Why don't they just buy it?

[Wandering Wombat]

Scrabble sees Scrabulous as a Risk to their Monopoly.

Re:Why don't they just buy it?

[FuzzyFox]

That could lead to Trouble. Sorry!

Re:Why don't they just buy it?

[ddrichardson]

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.

Re:Why don't they just buy it?

[spun]

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.

Re:Why don't they just buy it?

[lgw]

You can't copyright a game, but you *can* copyright a game board. Scrabulous used the Scabble game board (and that was a big part of why it was successful with existing Scrabble players), so they're probably doomed - it's a genuine old-school copyright violation, no DMCA required.

Re:Why don't they just buy it?

[Haeleth]

Please provide a link to where the Scrabulous creators are infringing the Hasbro trademark.

According to Hasbro, the very name "Scrabulous" infringes the Hasbro trademark, since (they say) it's confusingly similar.

That one might be debatable, but they also claim that scrabulous.com used to have META tags saying things like "free online scrabble". If that's true, then I'd think the case is pretty open-and-shut. I tried to check at archive.org, but it seems the Scrabulous people blocked archive.org from their site. (Hmm, that doesn't exactly reek of good faith, does it?)

And note that they live in India.

Yeah, I doubt Hasbro will get any money out of them. However, Facebook isn't based in India, so the Facebook app will certainly be taken down if Hasbro wins this case, and that's the main thing they appear to want.

Re:Why don't they just buy it?

[d34thm0nk3y]

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...

No, you can't copyright a game. The Kelloggs thing was a trademark claim which was settled out of court so who knows how that would have went. Your other example is a patent issue. I guess it needs to be repeated, once more, that patents, trademarks and copyright are all different things. Kelloggs link

Still alternatives

[uberphear]

Unfortunately, Hasbro will most likely come out on top because the Scrabble board layout itself is copyrighted and trademarked.

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.

Counter Sue

[AmericanInKiev]

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

Re:I love Scrabulous, but....

[jesdynf]

It's not as cut and dried as you say. You can't copyright the rules of a game, only your specific explanation of them.

There's probably infringing content, and I suppose they are trading on Hasbro's mark, but no, Hasbro doesn't own the platonic ideal of That Specific Word-Tile Game. What Hasbro owns is their description and presentation of that game, and various marks associated with it.

At least, as I understand things.

Hasbro only avail in 2 countries. Thanks Hasbro.

[DangerJones]

How about Hasbro makes an application that isn't only available in America and Canada before they spoil our fun?

Yes, it's too old.

[IdahoEv]

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?

Re:Yes, it's too old.

[btempleton]

Trademarks do not expire, nor is there a strong argument that they should, other than after a company stops selling the product.

The test in trademark law is "likelihood of confusion." Which is to say, if you went up to a man in the street, and said, "We have a game where you spell words using tiles on a crossword like board, and get points for the letters, and it's called Scrabulous" is there a reasonable chance a person might confuse that with Scrabble, the trademarked Hasbro game?

I have to say it sure sounds like yes. And if it's a yes (and depending on how good your lawyers are it doesn't have to be a very strong yes) then the case is pretty clear.

Trademarks don't expire because aside from protecting the company, they are viewed as also protecting the public from being tricked into buying counterfeit goods. Of course, sometimes the public is better off with counterfeit goods, but the law does not take that view.

I'd have more sympathy for the Scrabulous people..

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:I love Scrabulous, but....

[Citizen of Earth]

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.

Re:I love Scrabulous, but....

[cfulmer]

Yes. There is a serious doubt, at least on one of their claims.

They are raising two basic claims, under trademark law and copyright law. The trademark claim is basically that consumers will be confused into thinking this had something to do with Hasbro. The similarity of the names -- "Scrabble" v. "Scrabulous" doesn't help much. But, changing the name solves that problem.

The harder case for Hasbro is the copyright claim -- games have "thin" copyrights. In general, the only elements that are protected are (a) the text of the instructions and (b) the graphical elements. So, if Scrabulous didn't copy the Scrabble instructions and didn't copy the graphical elements, they should be fine.

Even on the graphical elements, if there are a small number of ways of expressing something, that expression is not protected either. So, for example, you need some way of putting both the point value and letter on each tile. With a small number of ways of doing so, I suspect that the tiles themselves are not protected. It's possible that Scrabulous might be dinged for copying Hasbro's choice of colors for the squares.

I have not played Scrabulous, so I just have no idea how this plays out.

Great blog post at http://www.thelegality.com/archives/11

Re:Scrabble

[vux984]

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.

Re: As the saying goes...

[Lookin' for work]

Don't tase me Hasbro!

Re:Buy it from Whom?

[75th Trombone]

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?