Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Hasbro Finally Drops Scrabulous Lawsuit

Posted by Soulskill on from the triple-word-score dept.

The Associated Press reports that Hasbro Inc. has now dropped the lawsuit it launched earlier this year against Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, the creators of Scrabulous, a Scrabble clone that found a sizable following on Facebook. We previously discussed Scrabulous' return to Facebook under a different name, as well as the "official" Scrabble client, which was not exactly well received. Hasbro's IP rights to the game are limited to North America, and the AP story adds: "Mattel, which owns the rights to Scrabble outside of North America, filed a lawsuit against the brothers in India claiming violations of intellectual property. It was not immediately clear what the status of that lawsuit is."

3 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. I hate that frigging game by stoolpigeon · · Score: 5, Funny

    My wife absolutely crushes me every time we play. It was bad enough when she dominated me in physical sports but this is too much. I was really hoping they would get shut down.

    --
    It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
  2. You can't create certain board layouts anymore by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    You are now constrained in terms of which board layouts you can create in Wordscraper which prevents you from creating a board with the same bonus pattern as the scrabble board.

    Some guy has figured out the rules:

    http://tinyurl.com/63fwjk

    I wouldn't have thought Hasbro had a legal leg to stand on with forcing wordscraper preventing users being able to create certain board layouts, but perhaps wordscraper just bowed to pressure to avoid legal hassle.

  3. Re:Still not convinced lawsuit was valid. by tomhudson · · Score: 5, Informative

    Many law suits have demonstrated that the idea of a game simply can't be copyrighted, only the name and IP.

    Law suits don't demonstrate this - it's the law at the US Copyright Office

    The idea for a game is not protected by copyright. The same is true of the name or title given to the game and of the method or methods for playing it.

    Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author's expression in literary, artistic, or musical form. Copyright protection does not extend to any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in the development, merchandising, or playing of a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles.

    In other words, the artwork is copyrightable, but neither the rules of the game, nor the method of play, is. That's simply the law.