It's no picnic to become a major anything. Major people are people who have differentiated themselves from minor people. The means by which they've done that is to do something that's more difficult, which the other people cannot do. This is a tautology masquerading as wisdom.
Yeah, I'm actually older than edlin and dos 3. Thanks for playing.
As far as once a thief, always a thief? Well, if you haven't stolen in years, that's different, but I confess I maintain my skepticism. Maybe it's music or TV these days, maybe it's office supplies from work. Maybe it's ROMs of old nintendo games you used to own because you don't want to buy them on the Wii. And, hey, maybe you really are different now. I don't know you.
Lal, sir, and lal again: to cite Wikipedia as authority shows that you aren't particularly interested in the quality of your reference. Either way, I'm not particularly worried about it; that you should attempt to provide justification on the explicit contrary of grounds I provided for distrust, using non-germane topics such as your satisfaction with the personal support provided by a company at some point in the past, is the refutation you think isn't there. I'm sorry that you think an adjoinder that directly refutes the parent post is somehow not a refutation, but I'm rather sorrier that I have to listen to you, and I'm about to end the problem.
Instead I provided a list of examples to demonstrate
...your inadequate control of fundamental logic. Yes, we saw. I don't know why you're banging this drum; it's obvious that I find your arguments laughable. It's not as if anyone but you is falling for (or even listening to) this self adulating diatribe.
Maybe you should steal a logic 101 class. I'm pretty done explaining the obvious to you, though, so make sure to fill your next post with asinine things like "this type of policy which dictates how people can live their lives", wherein you act as if you somehow have the fundamental right to steal other people's work. For someone so interested in rights, it seems curious that you have not yet considered the rights of the author. But, then, that's because the warezer's worldview does not extend outside their own skin.
You should be happy there are laws enforcing the common sense that people other than you have. That's why nobody's beaten the hell out of you for your self serving reprobia.
I also don't know why you'd think I'd give a damn what someone who steals from me has to say. I'm not the blog poster. I still hate you, and I don't give a shit about your opinions.
None of that has anything to do with this case, which is a set of actions by a small town comptroller. Go look up "straw man". Whether or not other things are tripping your ridiculously oversensitive conspiracy sensor has literally zero to do with this.
Consumers pay for what they consume. You're a thief, plain and simple. Your dissatisfaction with the service provided by some companies ten years ago does not justify your theft in any way.
I'd love to see a warezer with basic logic skills someday.
It turns out that the article summary presents a very different question than what the actual article author asked. I responded to the SlashDot version first, and the real version second. I also primarily posted this on my blog so that trackbacks would go appropriately to his blog. Still, since there are more people here, I'm leaving the response where I found it, so that I'll get responses.
Assuming that developers are missing out on potential sales from disgruntled pirates
... is a flawed assumption. Mister Harris appears to fail to understand the mindset of the pirate, who is a person who has confused what they want with what is ethical.
I've been running and co-running a number of small communities about game development for more than a decade now. Several of them have a real problem with pirates who show up looking for help with piracy. It's sometimes hard to tell the difference between a pirate and a kid using the wrong terms for things ("how do I build my ROM", etc); as such there's sort of an ongoing competition among the people who run these groups to see who can get these goons to uncover themselves the fastest, usually by feigning sympathy.
As a result, I've seen about three times as many warezers as the human population of Earth. Every single one tries to tell me, after they're removed, how it's not their fault they stole - the game is too expensive, or they don't want to feed EA, or they'll pay for it if they like it. Many of them have already forgotten that during the sympathy phase, they gave us lists of the games they had. Particularly galling are the people who brag that they have ROMs of every single DS game, or what have you, then turn around and pretend that it's just due to cost.
With respect, Mr. Harris, you're asking the wrong question. You could be selling your game for a quarter with a change accepting machine in their rooms; they wouldn't buy your game. They're out there getting every game they can find, often just for the bragging rights of having stolen more than their peers. Many of the people stealing your game haven't even heard of it and will never play it. These people cannot be converted into customers; they are too used to theft to recognize it as such, invariably vomiting up the same tripe about a false and meaningless distinction between copyright violation and theft, because they don't think of themselves as thieves and cannot face the honest nature of what they're doing. These people will never voluntarily give up money for your hard work, and you cannot get them to stop taking your work.
There are two somewhat more legitimate questions you might ask, however.
The first is "how can I profit from these people." That's not the same thing as turning them into customers. For example, though I do pay for my games, I play a lot of free games on the web which I wouldn't pay for (I'd just play more Civ instead.) DesktopTD is a great example: when it was news to me I would not have bought it because it looks poor, and by now I've played it so much that I don't even play it for free anymore. During my addiction I might have paid a couple of bucks for it, but probably not, and the market doesn't offer a sales mechanism that hits that phase.
However, DesktopTD has probably made about $3.50 from me by now. I'm not pulling that number out of thin air; I made an honest estimate of plays based on my best guess about when I found the game and how often I play, and ran it through the numbers for MochiAds. Admittedly, I'm not a warezer, so my example applicability is limited, and indeed I do know a few people who brag that they're running ad blockers so they're not inconvenienced with ten seconds of advertisement to put money in the developer's hands, even though the developer is giving their game away. Most of these people, unsurprisingly, are warezers.
The only way is to give a copy to a lawyer, get them to sign/date every page and keep a copy in their office.
There are more than a million notary publics in this nation who would beg to disagree, many of whom work for the bank and can put things in their vault for you, notarized, for around $20 plus $2/mo.
Stick to handing out advice regarding things you know about. Call your bank and ask the manager before you tell me I'm wrong.
How could anybody abandon the steady paychecks, access to the best tools and engines, large teams of skilled colleagues
Yeah, and the streets paved with gold. Because, you know, the game industry isn't run by a group of dinosaurs in a market with too little external pressure to drive out famously bad production practices.
The steady paychecks don't exist in a contracted world. The best tools and engines are things that were shaky when they were one-man hacked together ten years ago in C by someone who thought they should still have been writing assembly. The large teams of skilled colleagues are college kids being paid next to nothing while they're burned out by 70 hour workweeks in day one crunch mode shops.
If game design firms like this existed, the two year attrition in gaming wouldn't be 70%. This article is about fantasies of how the industry works, not realities; that's why the author can't figure out what's going on.
Well, except that it isn't, which was kind of my point. This is a trademark claim. Trademarks do not, and should not, expire. The game itself is entirely clonable.
Copyright is not a factor here. What's really being protected here is the title "Scrabble" - under the law, "scrabulous" is too similar for a competing product - as well as elements of its visual design, such as the choice of colors and visual representation for special squares (the little triangles at the edge of the boxes, etc).
The board's layout, incidentally, is not actually protected, just what it looks like. You can have exactly the same layout of exactly the same upgrade squares, and they can have exactly the same function; you just can't use the scrabble colors, the arrow edges, et cetera.
If you were to use animal pictures to indicate those cells (which is in fact what several kids' scrabble clones do), you'd be home free.
Correct. That is why I keep saying this is not an issue of copyright, but rather of trademark. (It's not clear to me whether you're agreeing and trying to support me, or misunderstanding the claims I made. If I'm repeating myself about something you already understand, my apologies; I do not mean to condescend. At least, not to you.)
Incidentally, whereas copyright would not protect the book's author there, trademark would. Feel free to consult a lawyer on the point.
I suspect that the work to create Scrabulous was more than simply running a Scrabble board through a photocopier and then changing the title...
Yep. And that's why when they change the board's appearance and the game's title, they're off of the hook. The work involved in making the implementation is not protected. Behavior and rule clones are legal. Name clones and appearance clones aren't.
But, hey, some random stranger on Slasdot assures me this has nothing to do with copyright, so I guess I'll just go with that.
Well, as long as you're too lazy to go through the post tree, to the places where I cite the US government sites which write out, clear as day, what copyright protects, then I guess I can't fault you for assuming that non-legally-trained staff writers make small mistakes in reporting. I do, however, find it amusing that you've managed to miss that all lawsuits for either copyright or trademark are filed as "copyright and trademark." Since it's a trademark issue, yes, this was filed as copyright and trademark. If you bother to look into the lawsuit, there are no copyright claims.
Incidentally, Scrabble is from 1938. That's a bit more than 60 years. If this were about copyright, it would apply to the work. The reason they cite 60 years is that the brand Scrabble was introduced in 1948; previously the game was known as Lexico. The reason they're focussing on the age of the brand, instead of the game, is because this is a trademark issue.
And yes, many companies abuse the DMCA because of its draconian policies regarding online content. Do you also believe that when the DMCA is invoked to shut down a porn site, it's a copyright issue? Welcome to America: laws are applicable in places other than where their titles might suggest.
As an intelligent human being
Straw man (and debatable). No amount of intelligence grants you magical education, and this is clearly a field with which you are no more familiar than anyone reading what other slashdotters told them. You haven't even sorted out yet that an A+B suit might be only about B. You don't even know how to read the titles of lawsuits.
who has actually looked around and noticed what happens in the real worl
What you may or may not have noticed in the real world, and attached misapprehensions to, has essentially nothing to do with your familiarity with the law. If you had noticed what happened in court, in terms of precedent, that would matter, but since precedent says you're wrong, I don't need to ask whether or not you've been paying attention. It's a little obvious. Go look up the history of Teeko.
Spend more time actually reading up on the subject we are commenting on
I don't need to. As a professional game developer, I've spent dozens of hours talking about this with lawyers. Don't get haughty just because you think you're right, as your citation count is zero and mine is not.
and less dispensing unsolicited advise to people who didn't ask for it.
Oh, I see, you live in a fantasy world where you may incorrectly tell someone they are wrong, and if they show you why, they're dispensing to you unwanted advice. I'd say Tu Quoque, but I doubt you'd understand it.
I would like to remind you that a can of Campbell's soup can be art.
Yeah, maybe you should go look up the ramifications of the lawsuit filed by the Campbell's Soup Company against Andy Warhol, where they argued literally the exact same thing to prevent their inclusion in his famous pop art. The courts said they were wrong.
Andy Warhol's painting of soup cans is art. The soup cans themselves are branding, and therefore trademark. That's why they're subject to fair use, when paintings are not. Your own example shoots you down, kid. Try doing the reading you plaintively nag from others.
Art is not a thing, it is the act of creation and appreciation.
Not under the law, it isn't. The law isn't worried about definitions you draw from personal experience. Otherwise, I'd be claiming what I said to you was art, in order to prevent you from replying to it to waste my time.
If you want to salve your own ego by saying "nuh uh" a lot w
Sorry, I meant to say "this is really about protecting the Scrabble trademark", which is why I hinged the argument I made on active protection. You're right to point out my error. As you probably know, a copyright is a copyright, but trademarks have to be vigorously defended or they disappear, even if they're not yet expired.
You are correct, I misspoke. I find it amusing that only one person noticed, when so many people were desperately trying to prove me wrong.
And therein lies the problem: you cannot try to abstract "new" without attempting to document and differentiate between every "new" concept, device, and process in the entire inventory of human innovative creation
Sure you can. Just because you don't know how the law does it doesn't mean the law doesn't do it. Try reading the law, instead of insisting it cannot exist due to your not being able to imagine how it might work. This is silly. There are dozens of such systems globally, even after the Berne conventions.
Stop confusing your ignorance with impossibility. It's genuinely embarrassing to watch. Learn the phrase "I don't know".
This may be the single greatest explanation of the difference between copyright and patent I've ever seen. That it happens to be correct is mere icing on the cake.
Oh, I'm sorry, if the basis (not crux) of your argument is something you can put in bold, then I can't point out the ridiculous stupidity of something else you said?
I guess they changed the rules of the internet. My bad. Anyway, if I'm not allowed to point out stupid things you said, then I pretty much can't reply to you for lack of things to say. Have a nice day.
I'm pretty sure intellectual property, or indeed *anything* that falls under copyright law is "innovated" in some manner.
Innovation is actually clearly defined with regards to intellectual property, and applies only to methods and mechanics for achieving work goals. The difference between patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret is that the first deals with innovative work, the second with creative work, the third with branding work and the fourth with methodology.
That's why a new kind of engine is only subject to patent, and not the other three: because it's innovation, and not artistic, branding or methodological.
That's why a book is only subject to copyright, and not the other three: it's a creative work, and not innovative, branding or methodological.
That's why a company name and advertising style are subject only to trademark, and not the other three: it's branding, and not creative, innovative or methodological.
That's why the colonel's secret blend of 11 herbs and spices is subject only to trade secret, and not the other three: it's methodological, not creative, innovative or branding.
The governing body of law must by needs make very explicit which category something falls into, so that it is clear which set of laws govern its protection, and as such the costs, duration and responsibility of the creator in regards to protecting it. Could those products be described with the other terms? Sure, the engine might be very artistically designed; it could have a really well sculpted engine block and a nice surface texture and whatever. But, from the perspective of the law, it is described as "a work of innovation". It doesn't matter if you can use the other words legitimately in a literate context; in the legal sense the words are far, far more narrowly defined.
But information is no less innovated. They are all the product of human intellect.
The law is not subject to semantic games. The word "innovation" in the context of legal protection for work has an extremely specific context which you are not applying. In context, that simply is not the case.
Legal terms != general words. Attempting to use legal terminology in a descriptive or proscriptive fashion is Guaranteed Fail (tm).
Hope that clears things up for you.
Imposed limitations on anything other than that are artificial, and silly.
Artificial? Sure, all law - and indeed all language, from one point of view - is artificial.
Silly? Speaking as someone enjoying those protections, I strongly disagree.
they didn't claim to be 'scrabble'. They claimed to be 'scrabulous'.
Yeah, and Mike Rowe Soft didn't claim to be Microsoft. Trademarks are subject to nearness, and it's well defined. Scrabulous is just as in the wrong as I would be if I made Cocara Cola.
Because I see all sorts of problems for microstar and anyone who sells a generic microwave.
Why, which manufacturer's trademark do you believe Microstar is violating? Or is it just that you believe random words are trademarks too?
Any reasonable person should come to the conclusion that
Any reasonable person should come to the conclusion that their opinion does not guide the law. Prefix haunting is a well established set of precedent. Spend less time theorizing what the law ought to be and more time learning what it actually is.
So, let me get this straight. You want to know if the fruit of the poisonous tree is a factor here, and you know that that only applies to law enforcement. Does that mean that you believe that the publishers of Scrabulous are a law enforcement entity?
but my gut tells me the civil system will work in that matter...
Thankfully, your gut is not a judge. The law doesn't work that way, and civil court never applies to two corporations acting on federal licensure. Please stop pretending to understand the law.
Games are not subject to copyright. (The binaries of computer games are, but that's a seperate issue.) This is a trademark issue, and no amount of trademarking their title will make any difference to Hasbro.
The facebook traffic is a drop in the bucket in the Scrabble world. This is really about protecting the Scrabble copyright, so that newspapers can't use the name. If Hasbro didn't say "stop it", other people would be able to say that the trademark was out of defense and therefore invalid.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it isn't.
It's no picnic to become a major anything. Major people are people who have differentiated themselves from minor people. The means by which they've done that is to do something that's more difficult, which the other people cannot do. This is a tautology masquerading as wisdom.
What kind of idiot replies by saying no reply?
Yeah, I'm actually older than edlin and dos 3. Thanks for playing.
As far as once a thief, always a thief? Well, if you haven't stolen in years, that's different, but I confess I maintain my skepticism. Maybe it's music or TV these days, maybe it's office supplies from work. Maybe it's ROMs of old nintendo games you used to own because you don't want to buy them on the Wii. And, hey, maybe you really are different now. I don't know you.
Also don't really care.
Lal, sir, and lal again: to cite Wikipedia as authority shows that you aren't particularly interested in the quality of your reference. Either way, I'm not particularly worried about it; that you should attempt to provide justification on the explicit contrary of grounds I provided for distrust, using non-germane topics such as your satisfaction with the personal support provided by a company at some point in the past, is the refutation you think isn't there. I'm sorry that you think an adjoinder that directly refutes the parent post is somehow not a refutation, but I'm rather sorrier that I have to listen to you, and I'm about to end the problem.
...your inadequate control of fundamental logic. Yes, we saw. I don't know why you're banging this drum; it's obvious that I find your arguments laughable. It's not as if anyone but you is falling for (or even listening to) this self adulating diatribe.
Maybe you should steal a logic 101 class. I'm pretty done explaining the obvious to you, though, so make sure to fill your next post with asinine things like "this type of policy which dictates how people can live their lives", wherein you act as if you somehow have the fundamental right to steal other people's work. For someone so interested in rights, it seems curious that you have not yet considered the rights of the author. But, then, that's because the warezer's worldview does not extend outside their own skin.
You should be happy there are laws enforcing the common sense that people other than you have. That's why nobody's beaten the hell out of you for your self serving reprobia.
I also don't know why you'd think I'd give a damn what someone who steals from me has to say. I'm not the blog poster. I still hate you, and I don't give a shit about your opinions.
None of that has anything to do with this case, which is a set of actions by a small town comptroller. Go look up "straw man". Whether or not other things are tripping your ridiculously oversensitive conspiracy sensor has literally zero to do with this.
Consumers pay for what they consume. You're a thief, plain and simple. Your dissatisfaction with the service provided by some companies ten years ago does not justify your theft in any way.
I'd love to see a warezer with basic logic skills someday.
Oh shut up, it's one small town's small-time comptroller, not a vast conspiracy by hyperblue states.
It turns out that the article summary presents a very different question than what the actual article author asked. I responded to the SlashDot version first, and the real version second. I also primarily posted this on my blog so that trackbacks would go appropriately to his blog. Still, since there are more people here, I'm leaving the response where I found it, so that I'll get responses.
I've been running and co-running a number of small communities about game development for more than a decade now. Several of them have a real problem with pirates who show up looking for help with piracy. It's sometimes hard to tell the difference between a pirate and a kid using the wrong terms for things ("how do I build my ROM", etc); as such there's sort of an ongoing competition among the people who run these groups to see who can get these goons to uncover themselves the fastest, usually by feigning sympathy.
As a result, I've seen about three times as many warezers as the human population of Earth. Every single one tries to tell me, after they're removed, how it's not their fault they stole - the game is too expensive, or they don't want to feed EA, or they'll pay for it if they like it. Many of them have already forgotten that during the sympathy phase, they gave us lists of the games they had. Particularly galling are the people who brag that they have ROMs of every single DS game, or what have you, then turn around and pretend that it's just due to cost.
With respect, Mr. Harris, you're asking the wrong question. You could be selling your game for a quarter with a change accepting machine in their rooms; they wouldn't buy your game. They're out there getting every game they can find, often just for the bragging rights of having stolen more than their peers. Many of the people stealing your game haven't even heard of it and will never play it. These people cannot be converted into customers; they are too used to theft to recognize it as such, invariably vomiting up the same tripe about a false and meaningless distinction between copyright violation and theft, because they don't think of themselves as thieves and cannot face the honest nature of what they're doing. These people will never voluntarily give up money for your hard work, and you cannot get them to stop taking your work.
There are two somewhat more legitimate questions you might ask, however.
The first is "how can I profit from these people." That's not the same thing as turning them into customers. For example, though I do pay for my games, I play a lot of free games on the web which I wouldn't pay for (I'd just play more Civ instead.) DesktopTD is a great example: when it was news to me I would not have bought it because it looks poor, and by now I've played it so much that I don't even play it for free anymore. During my addiction I might have paid a couple of bucks for it, but probably not, and the market doesn't offer a sales mechanism that hits that phase.
However, DesktopTD has probably made about $3.50 from me by now. I'm not pulling that number out of thin air; I made an honest estimate of plays based on my best guess about when I found the game and how often I play, and ran it through the numbers for MochiAds. Admittedly, I'm not a warezer, so my example applicability is limited, and indeed I do know a few people who brag that they're running ad blockers so they're not inconvenienced with ten seconds of advertisement to put money in the developer's hands, even though the developer is giving their game away. Most of these people, unsurprisingly, are warezers.
The other questi
There are more than a million notary publics in this nation who would beg to disagree, many of whom work for the bank and can put things in their vault for you, notarized, for around $20 plus $2/mo.
Stick to handing out advice regarding things you know about. Call your bank and ask the manager before you tell me I'm wrong.
Or to bomb New Jersey into an even bigger wasteland than it already is. France and Quebec too, if you need extra surface area.
Yeah, and the streets paved with gold. Because, you know, the game industry isn't run by a group of dinosaurs in a market with too little external pressure to drive out famously bad production practices.
The steady paychecks don't exist in a contracted world. The best tools and engines are things that were shaky when they were one-man hacked together ten years ago in C by someone who thought they should still have been writing assembly. The large teams of skilled colleagues are college kids being paid next to nothing while they're burned out by 70 hour workweeks in day one crunch mode shops.
If game design firms like this existed, the two year attrition in gaming wouldn't be 70%. This article is about fantasies of how the industry works, not realities; that's why the author can't figure out what's going on.
Well, except that it isn't, which was kind of my point. This is a trademark claim. Trademarks do not, and should not, expire. The game itself is entirely clonable.
Copyright is not a factor here. What's really being protected here is the title "Scrabble" - under the law, "scrabulous" is too similar for a competing product - as well as elements of its visual design, such as the choice of colors and visual representation for special squares (the little triangles at the edge of the boxes, etc).
The board's layout, incidentally, is not actually protected, just what it looks like. You can have exactly the same layout of exactly the same upgrade squares, and they can have exactly the same function; you just can't use the scrabble colors, the arrow edges, et cetera.
If you were to use animal pictures to indicate those cells (which is in fact what several kids' scrabble clones do), you'd be home free.
Correct. That is why I keep saying this is not an issue of copyright, but rather of trademark. (It's not clear to me whether you're agreeing and trying to support me, or misunderstanding the claims I made. If I'm repeating myself about something you already understand, my apologies; I do not mean to condescend. At least, not to you.)
Incidentally, whereas copyright would not protect the book's author there, trademark would. Feel free to consult a lawyer on the point.
Yep. And that's why when they change the board's appearance and the game's title, they're off of the hook. The work involved in making the implementation is not protected. Behavior and rule clones are legal. Name clones and appearance clones aren't.
Well, as long as you're too lazy to go through the post tree, to the places where I cite the US government sites which write out, clear as day, what copyright protects, then I guess I can't fault you for assuming that non-legally-trained staff writers make small mistakes in reporting. I do, however, find it amusing that you've managed to miss that all lawsuits for either copyright or trademark are filed as "copyright and trademark." Since it's a trademark issue, yes, this was filed as copyright and trademark. If you bother to look into the lawsuit, there are no copyright claims.
Incidentally, Scrabble is from 1938. That's a bit more than 60 years. If this were about copyright, it would apply to the work. The reason they cite 60 years is that the brand Scrabble was introduced in 1948; previously the game was known as Lexico. The reason they're focussing on the age of the brand, instead of the game, is because this is a trademark issue.
And yes, many companies abuse the DMCA because of its draconian policies regarding online content. Do you also believe that when the DMCA is invoked to shut down a porn site, it's a copyright issue? Welcome to America: laws are applicable in places other than where their titles might suggest.
Straw man (and debatable). No amount of intelligence grants you magical education, and this is clearly a field with which you are no more familiar than anyone reading what other slashdotters told them. You haven't even sorted out yet that an A+B suit might be only about B. You don't even know how to read the titles of lawsuits.
What you may or may not have noticed in the real world, and attached misapprehensions to, has essentially nothing to do with your familiarity with the law. If you had noticed what happened in court, in terms of precedent, that would matter, but since precedent says you're wrong, I don't need to ask whether or not you've been paying attention. It's a little obvious. Go look up the history of Teeko.
I don't need to. As a professional game developer, I've spent dozens of hours talking about this with lawyers. Don't get haughty just because you think you're right, as your citation count is zero and mine is not.
Oh, I see, you live in a fantasy world where you may incorrectly tell someone they are wrong, and if they show you why, they're dispensing to you unwanted advice. I'd say Tu Quoque, but I doubt you'd understand it.
Yeah, maybe you should go look up the ramifications of the lawsuit filed by the Campbell's Soup Company against Andy Warhol, where they argued literally the exact same thing to prevent their inclusion in his famous pop art. The courts said they were wrong.
Andy Warhol's painting of soup cans is art. The soup cans themselves are branding, and therefore trademark. That's why they're subject to fair use, when paintings are not. Your own example shoots you down, kid. Try doing the reading you plaintively nag from others.
Not under the law, it isn't. The law isn't worried about definitions you draw from personal experience. Otherwise, I'd be claiming what I said to you was art, in order to prevent you from replying to it to waste my time.
If you want to salve your own ego by saying "nuh uh" a lot w
Sorry, I meant to say "this is really about protecting the Scrabble trademark", which is why I hinged the argument I made on active protection. You're right to point out my error. As you probably know, a copyright is a copyright, but trademarks have to be vigorously defended or they disappear, even if they're not yet expired.
You are correct, I misspoke. I find it amusing that only one person noticed, when so many people were desperately trying to prove me wrong.
Sure you can. Just because you don't know how the law does it doesn't mean the law doesn't do it. Try reading the law, instead of insisting it cannot exist due to your not being able to imagine how it might work. This is silly. There are dozens of such systems globally, even after the Berne conventions.
Stop confusing your ignorance with impossibility. It's genuinely embarrassing to watch. Learn the phrase "I don't know".
Yes, except in the case of the font. Those things are being changed because this is a trademark issue, and trademark is about presentation.
This may be the single greatest explanation of the difference between copyright and patent I've ever seen. That it happens to be correct is mere icing on the cake.
You, sir, have earned a friend flag.
Oh, I'm sorry, if the basis (not crux) of your argument is something you can put in bold, then I can't point out the ridiculous stupidity of something else you said?
I guess they changed the rules of the internet. My bad. Anyway, if I'm not allowed to point out stupid things you said, then I pretty much can't reply to you for lack of things to say. Have a nice day.
Innovation is actually clearly defined with regards to intellectual property, and applies only to methods and mechanics for achieving work goals. The difference between patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret is that the first deals with innovative work, the second with creative work, the third with branding work and the fourth with methodology.
That's why a new kind of engine is only subject to patent, and not the other three: because it's innovation, and not artistic, branding or methodological.
That's why a book is only subject to copyright, and not the other three: it's a creative work, and not innovative, branding or methodological.
That's why a company name and advertising style are subject only to trademark, and not the other three: it's branding, and not creative, innovative or methodological.
That's why the colonel's secret blend of 11 herbs and spices is subject only to trade secret, and not the other three: it's methodological, not creative, innovative or branding.
The governing body of law must by needs make very explicit which category something falls into, so that it is clear which set of laws govern its protection, and as such the costs, duration and responsibility of the creator in regards to protecting it. Could those products be described with the other terms? Sure, the engine might be very artistically designed; it could have a really well sculpted engine block and a nice surface texture and whatever. But, from the perspective of the law, it is described as "a work of innovation". It doesn't matter if you can use the other words legitimately in a literate context; in the legal sense the words are far, far more narrowly defined.
The law is not subject to semantic games. The word "innovation" in the context of legal protection for work has an extremely specific context which you are not applying. In context, that simply is not the case.
Legal terms != general words. Attempting to use legal terminology in a descriptive or proscriptive fashion is Guaranteed Fail (tm).
Hope that clears things up for you.
Artificial? Sure, all law - and indeed all language, from one point of view - is artificial.
Silly? Speaking as someone enjoying those protections, I strongly disagree.
Yeah, and Mike Rowe Soft didn't claim to be Microsoft. Trademarks are subject to nearness, and it's well defined. Scrabulous is just as in the wrong as I would be if I made Cocara Cola.
Why, which manufacturer's trademark do you believe Microstar is violating? Or is it just that you believe random words are trademarks too?
Any reasonable person should come to the conclusion that their opinion does not guide the law. Prefix haunting is a well established set of precedent. Spend less time theorizing what the law ought to be and more time learning what it actually is.
So, let me get this straight. You want to know if the fruit of the poisonous tree is a factor here, and you know that that only applies to law enforcement. Does that mean that you believe that the publishers of Scrabulous are a law enforcement entity?
Thankfully, your gut is not a judge. The law doesn't work that way, and civil court never applies to two corporations acting on federal licensure. Please stop pretending to understand the law.
Games are not subject to copyright. (The binaries of computer games are, but that's a seperate issue.) This is a trademark issue, and no amount of trademarking their title will make any difference to Hasbro.
The facebook traffic is a drop in the bucket in the Scrabble world. This is really about protecting the Scrabble copyright, so that newspapers can't use the name. If Hasbro didn't say "stop it", other people would be able to say that the trademark was out of defense and therefore invalid.
None of this has anything to do with copyright.