At least that beta doesn't crash. When I ran on a recent Opera 9.50 beta build, it counted, stalled, stalled, crashed.;-)
What OS? Opera 9.5 beta works fine for me on OS X and gets 59/100. The only things that crashed for me were Shiira on OS X and Konquerer 3.5.2 on Kubuntu.
Note, the best score I'm getting is from Safari 3.0.4 with a nightly Webkit on OS X, with a score of 86/100.
I'm sorry but if you can't modify the code and redistribute it yourself, then I don't consider the source to be open.
I think you're confusing "open" with "free" (as in freedom). Generally, free software means it can be freely used and open just means you can view the source code.
Intellectual property laws are not uniform around the world.
I did not say they were. I said they are fairly uniform. For the most part Berne signatories have very similar laws, with a few discrepancies with regard to terms and reference copies.
That was one of the "I feel that the law is this way" arguments.
A comment about how people feel is an appeal to emotion. That is completely different from someone expressing what they think, which is simply an opinion. By using the word "feel" you misrepresent what was presented in earlier posts. As a lawyer surely you understand the need for precision in writing to avoid such misrepresentation.
You might wonder "where does this guy get off saying all this?" I'm a lawyer.
This is called, appeal to authority. That is basically you are claiming to be an authority on the subject, which is fine, but does not make your arguments any more correct.
It's not patent law, as you claim. A patent would have expired years ago.
Statements like this make me wonder why I bother replying to you. Go reread my posts. I said certain parts of the game would have been protected by patents, since copyright specifically does not apply to those elements. Then I mention that the patents would be expired by now and the only IP law that would still apply would be trademarks, which I then go on to provide a short explanation of what that covers.
Also, Scrabble was denied a patent by the PTO.
They may have been denied any number of patents, but they were also granted U.S. Patent, No. 2,752,158. The reason that is not a real concern is because it expired in the early 70s.
I don't know what copyrights are claimed, but there are several claims that could be raised, including the look of the board as an artistic expression.
This is untrue. The copyrights on the rules and board were granted in 1938, meaning they had no chance to extend them before they expired.
Clearly there are a number of trademark issues.
As I previously stated, this is the only IP that still applies. As far as I know there is only one trademark that has any bearing, that being on the name "Scrabble" and Scrabulous is fairly clearly a portmanteau combining the words "scrabble" and "fabulous."
It's not clear why you brushed those claims aside, maybe you don't know the law and you just felt that it was a certain way?
This is called a straw man argument. You claim that maybe I was influenced by my emotions, although there is no evidence that is the case. You'd think a lawyer would have studied rhetoric enough to avoid such obvious fallacies. I explained why patents and copyright don't apply (since both are expired). I specifically stated that trademark still does apply.
Is Scrabulous too similar to Scrabble? Maybe. Is the use of the word Scrab in conjunction with a crossword game a trademark violation - probably.
It is almost certainly a violation. I'd like to point out "scrab" is not a word. It is a partial word combined with part of another word. Given that the word "scrabble" is not commonly applied to board games in general, I don't think there is much question about whether this is a violation.
Mattel and Hasbro's position, obviously, is that there is a violation of their intellectual property in one form or another.
If you read the original quotes from Mattel (who is the only party to mention legal action) they specifically say "intellectual property," "brand," and "trademark." The mention of copyright was mentioned only by the reporter, who likely confused what IP applied.
They will raise both copyright and trademark claims.
I don't think so. Copyright expired on this as it was granted before the 40s.
So you admit you're stupid enough to think that they wouldn't use their trademark name if it was official?
It is common practice to introduce new, trademarked products which are derived from existing trademarked names (by the original trademark holder). Examples include "Windows XP" being derivative of "Windows." More pertinent, perhaps is "Super Scrabble" a trademarked game by Hasbro which is derivative of the original "Scrabble." It is not uncommon for a person to assume that like "Super Scrabble," "Scrabulous" was also a new product from either Hasbro or Mattel (depending upon the jurisdiction).
Is it? If it was "Scapple" or "Scabblo", sure. But I don't see "Scrabulous" infringing just because it shares the same first 5 letters.
Scrabble is a real word meaning "to frantically scratch." Fabulous is a common word. Scrabulous makes sense from a linguistics perspective as a portmanteau that combines the two words and their meanings. Since "scrab" is such an unusual word beginning I think it would be quite hard for any defense to convincingly claim "scrabulous" is not derived directly from the name of scrabble the board game. Since Scrabble is not a common word in relation to board games, the trademark in that area is very clear cut.
The two words don't look or sound particularly similar.
I see, so your theory as to how they chose the name is that it was a random, nonsense word that just happens to share the first five letters with a nearly identical game that is quite popular?
Or are you saying that every computer company with a name starting with "Micro" is infringing Microsoft's trademark?
No, I'm not saying that at all, nor would I need to in order for my former argument to be true. Micro is a common beginning to the names of many computer related companies because microelectronics was the trade name of the field that gave rise to modern computers. Likewise "soft" refers to software, also a common term in the same industry. However, you'll note that the "Lindows" product settled their lawsuit about being confusingly similar to "Windows" before they could lose it. The reason for that is because "Windows" was trademarked and they were on the record as having said it was a blend of "Windows" and "Linux."
What bothers me about these discussions on Slashdot is that 99% of the time, it's people that aren't lawyers, and don't really have a sense of what the law actually is.
Actually I had already linked to this page which is the U.S. office of copyright's page for guidelines on copyrighting games. It specifically excludes the items I mentioned and since trademark does not apply to such items, patent is all that is left.
"I feel that the law is this way" really isn't a valid argument.
You're correct, excepting the fact that your statement is a straw man, since neither I nor the other poster claimed we felt anything, only what we thought.
Can either the parent or the GP point to some precedent - legislation, caselaw or anything to support their positions
Strangely I don't have a legal library handy. I did, however, cite public documents published by the government.
What jurisdiction would this be filed in?
Likely India for ease of getting damages.
Is there any jurisdiction that would support Mattel or Hasbro's position?
And what position, exactly, is that? Mattel, who has standing in this, has only talked about trademarks. Lots of jurisdictions will support their rights in that regard and they probably have a pretty slam-dunk case with Scrabble and Scrabulous being so similar.
These are all important questions before you can start to argue abstractly on law you don't know about.
You don't have to be an expert on intellectual property laws to have a reasonable handle on them, given that they are fairly uniform in most of the world. That applies double in a simple case like this.
Yeah, drug dealers make a lot of money and look where they end up? Still think they're bright?
You mean living in a nicer house than mine?
They stole the game and put it online.
They didn't steal anything. They copied something, an idea, that someone else came up with. That is normal. We all build upon the works of those before us. Star Wars used plot lines copied from westerns who, in turn, had copied them from samurai books. Each built upon the last and added something of their own as well. No one, not even Mattel, is alleging anyone stole anything. What Mattel is claiming is that the name "Scrabulous" is too close to their name "Scrabble" and thus people will think it was made by Mattel. Thus, Mattel will probably get a court order for the name to be changed.
Why are people defending them?
Many people feel intellectual property laws as they are currently enacted are unfair.
They pirated the game
Yeah and you raped the dictionary. Transposing words with a high negativity index in order to try to capitalize on people's emotion is a time tested marketing trick. It is also a logical fallacy, appeal to emotion and conflation.
when people rip movies and put them online and sell them for $25,000/mo and the FBI raids their home does anyone on/. say "Hey that's not right!
Yes. Especially when they are movies so old that the copyright has expired and all the original creators are long since dead.
...hey were only stealing money from the creators!"
Alfred Butts? The dead guy? He's been dead for 20 years and the person he sold the rights to has been dead longer. You can't take it with you man.
I hope Hasbro sues them for every dime they've made.
Mattel, not Hasbro. I guess if you don't know that Mattel sells Scrabble overseas and owns the rights, maybe a similar name isn't tarnishing their brand, but that of their biggest competitor.
You can't just rip-off popular board games and cry foul when the owners bitch.
Lots of people own Scrabble games and this deprives them of nothing. As for intellectual property, copyright and patents have both expired and entered the public domain. The only intellectual property that applies is trademark, as in not confusing people into thinking one company made something when someone else did.
Anyone want to make a online Monopoly... er, I mean "Monopolious"... and cry then Parker Brothers sues?
The only problem I see with that is the name, if you confuse people into thinking Parker Bros. made it.
It'd be total anarchy if Hasbro let's these guys continue.
Yah I'm sure all of society would break down and it would start raining donkey feces. That's called appeal to consequences; yet another argument demonstrated to be a logical fallacy more than a thousand years ago.
Hell if they somehow get away with this I'm making Starcraft Universe (WoW clone) and I'm gonna be a millionaire!
Go for it, but you'll have to wait longer than the 70 years it took for the copyright on Scrabble to expire, I hope you live longer than 100 years.
While it is true that you must defend your trademark or you give up the right to defend it in the future, I believe obtaining a settlement does count as defending your trademark. I don't believe you HAVE to file a formal lawsuit.
From what I've read: You have to send a cease and desist notice. After which, if the other party does not comply you must file suit. I believe at that point you can come to a settlement and drop the suit, provided that settlement includes them paying you or stopping distribution to prevent another party from using a laches defense in a later suit.
They should just offer the guys in India a reasonable sum for the code, or maybe even get them development jobs and back off - it will be much better for PR than trying to shut the site down.
That isn't an option. If they don't file suit, anyone at a later date can claim they allowed others to use a similar name to their trademark and it has been genericized, associated with any game of that sort instead of just Mattel's version. In the US, you have to defend trademarks or you lose them. They're trying to protect their brick and mortar business and the law gives them little option.
But why should some douchebag lawyer let increased profits stand in the way of a good old fashioned pointless lawsuit?
Actually, they have to bring suit unless they want to lose their trademark on the name "Scrabble" thus killing their brick and mortar Scrabble business.
How exactly is Scrabulous in "flagrant violation of copyright law"?
It isn't.
Did they use the Scrabble trademark? Scrabulous may be a blatant rip-off of Scrabble, but it's not at all clear that it violates any of Mattel's intellectual property.
"Scrabulous" is fairly clearly too similar to Scrabble for trademark law. That is the intellectual property issue here.
...thus, in my twisted logic, they are not really being deprived of revenues they would have been otherwise earning...
Lost revenue has little bearing on intellectual property anymore. Basically it only matters for how much can be claimed as damages for violations of registered trademarks after a takedown notice has been sent. Back in the 70's it mattered, but since then lobbyists have bought more restrictive laws.
Rather than suing these guys they need to hire them.
According to our laws, Mattel has little choice. If someone can show they knew about Scrabulous and did nothing, Mattel could lose their trademark on Scrabble and nothing would stop other companies from creating nearly exact clones of Scrabble, even called Scrabble, or Scrabble Extreme or whatever; destroying their brick and mortar business.
Just to be clear, what is the precedent? That you can't copyright game play? That defending virtual property is hard? What exactly?
This link is the US Copyright Office's page describing how copyright applies to games. The relevant quote is:
...the text matter describing the rules of the game, or the pictorial matter appearing on the gameboard or container, may be registrable.
Basically, copyright applies to the text and graphic elements, none of which are likely identical in this clone. What could be defended as intellectual property would be a patent on the mechanics of game play (which are almost certainly expired) and a trademark on the name "Scrabble" which does not expire and almost certainly provides an avenue for legal action since "Scrabulous" is clearly derivative and confusing to purchasers.
That Mattel isn't making money from the Scabulous app while the creators of the app are, and that they feel that they should be. Basically it sounds something akin to corporate extortion, in a legal sense (or course).
Actually, Mattel does have a point. Someone is using a name "Scrabulous" which is easily confused with "Scabble" such that normal people could easily assume both were made by Mattel. It is making money using the good brand name Mattel built. As for the profit aspect, technically that is irrelevant according to current laws.
Except for the fact that its totally wrong. the game is not in violation of copyright.
You're probably correct, but that is not the submitter's fault. He correctly summarized the PC World article, which correctly referenced the Reuters article, which said "copyright" even though the direct quotes said "intellectual property," "brand," and 'trademark." The summary itself was above par (IMHO) even if the submitter was not really up on the types of intellectual property (which admittedly are confusing).
The arrangement of bonus squares could be subject to copyright.
I don't think this is true. You could patent the arrangement, but that would have expired by now. You could patent certain images in certain locations, but if, for example, a clone used a different symbol or text to indicate bonus squares I don't think that would be considered copyright infringement.
Also (although with somewhat less certainty) the selection of available letters could be subject to copyright.
Again, I think this would have to be a patent.
Change these, and you'll end up with a game that is somewhat like Scrabble, but which isn't Scrabble and which isn't subject to copyright.
I'm pretty sure copyright is a mistake made by the Reuters reporter. He references copyright, but the Mattel representative says "trademark" and "Scrablous" is pretty confusingly similar to "Scrabble" such that the average person could certainly think the former was made by the same person as the latter.
The image of the board can be copyrighted. The manual can be copyrighted. The logo can be trademarked. But the rules of the game are not subject to copyright.
Yeah, people are clueless about intellectual property. I dug up the original Reuters article this is referencing, assuming somewhere along the line someone copying it had managed to confuse copyright and trademarks. Sadly, it appears it was the original reporter that screwed up. He says they threatened with regard to copyrights, but all the direct quotes refer to trademarks, brands and "intellectual property." Never once does any spokesperson for Mattel reference copyright directly.
Note, trademarks are probably what are at issue since "Scrabulous" is easily confused with "Scrabble." The authors of the game should have picked something that did not reference the trademarked name.
For crying out loud, not everything has to get on the web.
No, but there are advantages to Web applications that have not been realized due to artificial limitations.
We have these nice things called desktop applications. Sure, web applications have their placed, and can be very useful for several things, but let's not exaggarate[sic].
Web applications can theoretically work from any computer, while traditional applications cannot. More importantly, however, is Web applications can work regardless of the operating system, which opens the way for easy cross-platform development allowing large organizations to avoid paying the MS tax. Even with the incredibly limited functionality supported by IE, Web mail, Web IM, Web games and even Web based office suites have significant use. Imagine if they were 10 times as easy to use and 3 times as functional as they are today.
I doubt Web applications will ever take over all the functions of OS specific apps, but hybrid applications and Web apps could easily allow normal users to have all their data backed up and accessible to their old computer and their new computer without having to re-install or buy migration software. This scared the hell out of Microsoft, which is why they have held back Web technologies as much as possible.
It is sad that there are people who call themself a Christian, yet say that the Bible isn't true.
Actually what is sad are people who call themselves "christians" but who try to justify unethical acts using poorly translated copies of third hand accounts of religious works mainly borrowed from other religions old testament) but who don't act in accordance with the teachings of Jesus who repeatedly preached the same themes (like nonviolence in the face of violence). It has been historically documented that the people choosing the works that now form the Bible had political considerations and there are also well documented cases where the Bible has been altered by mistranslation or simply because someone wanted to. A good example is the well known story about "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" which appears as a sidenote in the earliest Bibles, copied from a popular morality play of the times, and later included in the text itself by copyists.
I mean how many military soldiers have travelled to a foreign land to commit violence or threaten violence and yet consider themselves "christians" completely ignoring such a major and clear theme of Jesus's teachings?
Competition is good, when it is fair competition in a healthy market.
If Microsoft actually goes and creates a superior product then IE users get a better browser which forces Firefox to either "up it's game" (giving FF users an even better browser) or remain the same while everyone switches back to IE because it's superior.
The problem is, what if IE isn't better or what if IE 8 is better but IE 9 is worse? In the first case most people still use IE even though it is inferior, because they assume a normal free market is operating and if there was a better browser Dell or Gateway or Sony would put it on their computer for them. Worse yet, every time a person buys a new computer (every few years) the whole thing is reset and MS gets another shot at being "good enough" that people don't go out of their way to get something better. So if any version of IE is better, more people end up using it than its merits would win in a normal, free market. This allows Microsoft (the monopolist) to use their market share to introduce artificial problems in the offerings of competitors (even if that problem is just Firefox is harder to obtain and install). Worse yet, Microsoft can use their dominance to prevent progress. Right now IE does not even completely support 8-year old Web standards that everyone else does... so those standards go unused by all because no developer can afford to lose 70% of potential customers. In this way the Web has been crippled; prevented from becoming a viable alternative for most applications (which would remove the need to pay MS for having a monopoly on desktop OS's).
Either way everyone gets a better browser. Win-win.
Sadly that is not the way it works when one player is leveraging a monopoly in another market. A lot of people end up with a worse browser (regardless of which one they use) as well as a less functional internet.
Firefox 3 is in beta, and FF 2 has been feature-frozen for a long time, so it's an unfair comparison.
Why? The browsers were all referring to the release versions, not the beta versions. Opera 9.2 has been feature complete for a while to, and the 9.3 beta is in use. I don't see why this makes a difference. The only real difference I see is availability of alphas and betas is sometimes restricted more than Firefox.
The question is, "of real standards, does Firefox tend to have better support" and I don't see the availability of a Firefox beta, Opera beta, or WebKit beta as being any different.
Did anyone else check out the fake blog/pages? There was a banner ad for a service where you can rent designer purses so you can show them off and then return them without having to pay the full price. It seemed to be a real service. The fact that such a company can stay in business is probably a sign of the apocalypse. Does anyone really know anyone who is so obsessed with designer brands that they would do such a thing? I can actually understand buying a designer product if you believe they actually make better products and are worth the cost. I sometimes pay more for a product from a company who has proven they make quality goods. But do people really buy (or rent) designer products for the sole purpose of showing off... conspicuous consumption of purses?
It makes me appreciate all the intelligent and deviant friends I have all the more. The only brands they consume conspicuously are on the opposite end, with titles like "black label" and "old crow."
Of course it does. Likely it will work on OS X too. Every new format or protocol or technology MS pushes that is in a market they have not dominated works on other platforms. The problem is what happens as soon as MS has enough share of that market. That is when incompatibilities or platform support is intentionally broken to lock-in users, force users to move to MS products, and help reinforce their primary monopoly. The solution is to support only open standard formats with trademarked names, so that MS cannot later break compatibility until the courts order them to stop (many years later after the new market has been destroyed).
Which, in actual terms, means that people code to Firefox just as they code to IE. It just so happens that coding your page to look right in Firefox is a helluva lot closer to the standard (if not it exactly) than when you do the same in IE.
I disagree. At my last employer I used OmniWeb for a while (a very niche browser). Most of the Web UI developers used Firefox, but a couple used Konquerer. A few used Safari. A few used Camino. A few used Opera. Regardless of what you used, when you found a bug, you tested it with a couple of other browsers and if the remote Windows box was available (or you had an emulator running), you tested it on multiple browsers and multiple platforms.
The upshot of all of this was, when a bug was listed, it was pretty easy to see which bugs were specific to a given browser. Bugs that appeared in some version of IE, but in no other browser at all, were by far the most common occurrence. Realistically our approach boiled down to, "write to standards; then hack for IE. " Make no mistake, we did not code for some other browser then try to make it work on every one, because that was not needed for the most part. We were programmatically generating Web pages and interfaces from XML data and a couple of databases. For the vast majority of the time, all browsers but IE were close enough to the standards we used (HTML3, CSS2, XHTML) so that there were no discrepancies when tested.
There are many web technologies, but there isn't a single browser that fully supports all of the standards you listed. I wish there was. Feel free to correct me If I'm wrong.
No, here is no browser that supports all of those completely. Some of the specifications are still in draft form for some of those technologies. So far, however, Firefox, Safari, Konquerer, and Opera all have at least some support for every one of the specifications I mentioned. Explorer has some support for some of them, but is behind on all of them compared to every other browser.
The difference is which browser teams are committed to implementing standards going forward and advancing the Web technologies as a real goal and which are interested in doing as little to make the Web a more powerful platform as possible while not incurring serious legal problems. I submit that if Microsoft is really serious about implementing the standards they will have at least some support for all of these Web technologies in IE 8, enough so that it shows they are committed to keeping current with Web technologies instead of freezing the Web at a technological level it was at 8 years ago and making sure it is never useful enough so that people can use Windows or some other platform.
Slashdot Mirror
What OS? Opera 9.5 beta works fine for me on OS X and gets 59/100. The only things that crashed for me were Shiira on OS X and Konquerer 3.5.2 on Kubuntu.
Note, the best score I'm getting is from Safari 3.0.4 with a nightly Webkit on OS X, with a score of 86/100.
I think you're confusing "open" with "free" (as in freedom). Generally, free software means it can be freely used and open just means you can view the source code.
Intellectual property laws are not uniform around the world.
I did not say they were. I said they are fairly uniform. For the most part Berne signatories have very similar laws, with a few discrepancies with regard to terms and reference copies.
That was one of the "I feel that the law is this way" arguments.
A comment about how people feel is an appeal to emotion. That is completely different from someone expressing what they think, which is simply an opinion. By using the word "feel" you misrepresent what was presented in earlier posts. As a lawyer surely you understand the need for precision in writing to avoid such misrepresentation.
You might wonder "where does this guy get off saying all this?" I'm a lawyer.
This is called, appeal to authority. That is basically you are claiming to be an authority on the subject, which is fine, but does not make your arguments any more correct.
It's not patent law, as you claim. A patent would have expired years ago.
Statements like this make me wonder why I bother replying to you. Go reread my posts. I said certain parts of the game would have been protected by patents, since copyright specifically does not apply to those elements. Then I mention that the patents would be expired by now and the only IP law that would still apply would be trademarks, which I then go on to provide a short explanation of what that covers.
Also, Scrabble was denied a patent by the PTO.
They may have been denied any number of patents, but they were also granted U.S. Patent, No. 2,752,158. The reason that is not a real concern is because it expired in the early 70s.
I don't know what copyrights are claimed, but there are several claims that could be raised, including the look of the board as an artistic expression.
This is untrue. The copyrights on the rules and board were granted in 1938, meaning they had no chance to extend them before they expired.
Clearly there are a number of trademark issues.
As I previously stated, this is the only IP that still applies. As far as I know there is only one trademark that has any bearing, that being on the name "Scrabble" and Scrabulous is fairly clearly a portmanteau combining the words "scrabble" and "fabulous."
It's not clear why you brushed those claims aside, maybe you don't know the law and you just felt that it was a certain way?
This is called a straw man argument. You claim that maybe I was influenced by my emotions, although there is no evidence that is the case. You'd think a lawyer would have studied rhetoric enough to avoid such obvious fallacies. I explained why patents and copyright don't apply (since both are expired). I specifically stated that trademark still does apply.
Is Scrabulous too similar to Scrabble? Maybe. Is the use of the word Scrab in conjunction with a crossword game a trademark violation - probably.
It is almost certainly a violation. I'd like to point out "scrab" is not a word. It is a partial word combined with part of another word. Given that the word "scrabble" is not commonly applied to board games in general, I don't think there is much question about whether this is a violation.
Mattel and Hasbro's position, obviously, is that there is a violation of their intellectual property in one form or another.
If you read the original quotes from Mattel (who is the only party to mention legal action) they specifically say "intellectual property," "brand," and "trademark." The mention of copyright was mentioned only by the reporter, who likely confused what IP applied.
They will raise both copyright and trademark claims.
I don't think so. Copyright expired on this as it was granted before the 40s.
But you're sorely mistaken if
It is common practice to introduce new, trademarked products which are derived from existing trademarked names (by the original trademark holder). Examples include "Windows XP" being derivative of "Windows." More pertinent, perhaps is "Super Scrabble" a trademarked game by Hasbro which is derivative of the original "Scrabble." It is not uncommon for a person to assume that like "Super Scrabble," "Scrabulous" was also a new product from either Hasbro or Mattel (depending upon the jurisdiction).
Scrabble is a real word meaning "to frantically scratch." Fabulous is a common word. Scrabulous makes sense from a linguistics perspective as a portmanteau that combines the two words and their meanings. Since "scrab" is such an unusual word beginning I think it would be quite hard for any defense to convincingly claim "scrabulous" is not derived directly from the name of scrabble the board game. Since Scrabble is not a common word in relation to board games, the trademark in that area is very clear cut.
The two words don't look or sound particularly similar.I see, so your theory as to how they chose the name is that it was a random, nonsense word that just happens to share the first five letters with a nearly identical game that is quite popular?
Or are you saying that every computer company with a name starting with "Micro" is infringing Microsoft's trademark?No, I'm not saying that at all, nor would I need to in order for my former argument to be true. Micro is a common beginning to the names of many computer related companies because microelectronics was the trade name of the field that gave rise to modern computers. Likewise "soft" refers to software, also a common term in the same industry. However, you'll note that the "Lindows" product settled their lawsuit about being confusingly similar to "Windows" before they could lose it. The reason for that is because "Windows" was trademarked and they were on the record as having said it was a blend of "Windows" and "Linux."
Actually I had already linked to this page which is the U.S. office of copyright's page for guidelines on copyrighting games. It specifically excludes the items I mentioned and since trademark does not apply to such items, patent is all that is left.
"I feel that the law is this way" really isn't a valid argument.You're correct, excepting the fact that your statement is a straw man, since neither I nor the other poster claimed we felt anything, only what we thought.
Can either the parent or the GP point to some precedent - legislation, caselaw or anything to support their positionsStrangely I don't have a legal library handy. I did, however, cite public documents published by the government.
What jurisdiction would this be filed in?Likely India for ease of getting damages.
Is there any jurisdiction that would support Mattel or Hasbro's position?And what position, exactly, is that? Mattel, who has standing in this, has only talked about trademarks. Lots of jurisdictions will support their rights in that regard and they probably have a pretty slam-dunk case with Scrabble and Scrabulous being so similar.
These are all important questions before you can start to argue abstractly on law you don't know about.You don't have to be an expert on intellectual property laws to have a reasonable handle on them, given that they are fairly uniform in most of the world. That applies double in a simple case like this.
You mean living in a nicer house than mine?
They stole the game and put it online.They didn't steal anything. They copied something, an idea, that someone else came up with. That is normal. We all build upon the works of those before us. Star Wars used plot lines copied from westerns who, in turn, had copied them from samurai books. Each built upon the last and added something of their own as well. No one, not even Mattel, is alleging anyone stole anything. What Mattel is claiming is that the name "Scrabulous" is too close to their name "Scrabble" and thus people will think it was made by Mattel. Thus, Mattel will probably get a court order for the name to be changed.
Why are people defending them?Many people feel intellectual property laws as they are currently enacted are unfair.
They pirated the gameYeah and you raped the dictionary. Transposing words with a high negativity index in order to try to capitalize on people's emotion is a time tested marketing trick. It is also a logical fallacy, appeal to emotion and conflation.
when people rip movies and put them online and sell them for $25,000/mo and the FBI raids their home does anyone onYes. Especially when they are movies so old that the copyright has expired and all the original creators are long since dead.
...hey were only stealing money from the creators!"Alfred Butts? The dead guy? He's been dead for 20 years and the person he sold the rights to has been dead longer. You can't take it with you man.
I hope Hasbro sues them for every dime they've made.Mattel, not Hasbro. I guess if you don't know that Mattel sells Scrabble overseas and owns the rights, maybe a similar name isn't tarnishing their brand, but that of their biggest competitor.
You can't just rip-off popular board games and cry foul when the owners bitch.Lots of people own Scrabble games and this deprives them of nothing. As for intellectual property, copyright and patents have both expired and entered the public domain. The only intellectual property that applies is trademark, as in not confusing people into thinking one company made something when someone else did.
Anyone want to make a online Monopoly... er, I mean "Monopolious"... and cry then Parker Brothers sues?The only problem I see with that is the name, if you confuse people into thinking Parker Bros. made it.
It'd be total anarchy if Hasbro let's these guys continue.Yah I'm sure all of society would break down and it would start raining donkey feces. That's called appeal to consequences; yet another argument demonstrated to be a logical fallacy more than a thousand years ago.
Hell if they somehow get away with this I'm making Starcraft Universe (WoW clone) and I'm gonna be a millionaire!Go for it, but you'll have to wait longer than the 70 years it took for the copyright on Scrabble to expire, I hope you live longer than 100 years.
From what I've read: You have to send a cease and desist notice. After which, if the other party does not comply you must file suit. I believe at that point you can come to a settlement and drop the suit, provided that settlement includes them paying you or stopping distribution to prevent another party from using a laches defense in a later suit.
That isn't an option. If they don't file suit, anyone at a later date can claim they allowed others to use a similar name to their trademark and it has been genericized, associated with any game of that sort instead of just Mattel's version. In the US, you have to defend trademarks or you lose them. They're trying to protect their brick and mortar business and the law gives them little option.
Actually, they have to bring suit unless they want to lose their trademark on the name "Scrabble" thus killing their brick and mortar Scrabble business.
It isn't.
Did they use the Scrabble trademark? Scrabulous may be a blatant rip-off of Scrabble, but it's not at all clear that it violates any of Mattel's intellectual property."Scrabulous" is fairly clearly too similar to Scrabble for trademark law. That is the intellectual property issue here.
Lost revenue has little bearing on intellectual property anymore. Basically it only matters for how much can be claimed as damages for violations of registered trademarks after a takedown notice has been sent. Back in the 70's it mattered, but since then lobbyists have bought more restrictive laws.
Rather than suing these guys they need to hire them.According to our laws, Mattel has little choice. If someone can show they knew about Scrabulous and did nothing, Mattel could lose their trademark on Scrabble and nothing would stop other companies from creating nearly exact clones of Scrabble, even called Scrabble, or Scrabble Extreme or whatever; destroying their brick and mortar business.
This link is the US Copyright Office's page describing how copyright applies to games. The relevant quote is:
...the text matter describing the rules of the game, or the pictorial matter appearing on the gameboard or container, may be registrable.Basically, copyright applies to the text and graphic elements, none of which are likely identical in this clone. What could be defended as intellectual property would be a patent on the mechanics of game play (which are almost certainly expired) and a trademark on the name "Scrabble" which does not expire and almost certainly provides an avenue for legal action since "Scrabulous" is clearly derivative and confusing to purchasers.
Actually, Mattel does have a point. Someone is using a name "Scrabulous" which is easily confused with "Scabble" such that normal people could easily assume both were made by Mattel. It is making money using the good brand name Mattel built. As for the profit aspect, technically that is irrelevant according to current laws.
You're probably correct, but that is not the submitter's fault. He correctly summarized the PC World article, which correctly referenced the Reuters article, which said "copyright" even though the direct quotes said "intellectual property," "brand," and 'trademark." The summary itself was above par (IMHO) even if the submitter was not really up on the types of intellectual property (which admittedly are confusing).
I don't think this is true. You could patent the arrangement, but that would have expired by now. You could patent certain images in certain locations, but if, for example, a clone used a different symbol or text to indicate bonus squares I don't think that would be considered copyright infringement.
Also (although with somewhat less certainty) the selection of available letters could be subject to copyright.Again, I think this would have to be a patent.
Change these, and you'll end up with a game that is somewhat like Scrabble, but which isn't Scrabble and which isn't subject to copyright.I'm pretty sure copyright is a mistake made by the Reuters reporter. He references copyright, but the Mattel representative says "trademark" and "Scrablous" is pretty confusingly similar to "Scrabble" such that the average person could certainly think the former was made by the same person as the latter.
Yeah, people are clueless about intellectual property. I dug up the original Reuters article this is referencing, assuming somewhere along the line someone copying it had managed to confuse copyright and trademarks. Sadly, it appears it was the original reporter that screwed up. He says they threatened with regard to copyrights, but all the direct quotes refer to trademarks, brands and "intellectual property." Never once does any spokesperson for Mattel reference copyright directly.
Note, trademarks are probably what are at issue since "Scrabulous" is easily confused with "Scrabble." The authors of the game should have picked something that did not reference the trademarked name.
No, but there are advantages to Web applications that have not been realized due to artificial limitations.
We have these nice things called desktop applications. Sure, web applications have their placed, and can be very useful for several things, but let's not exaggarate[sic].Web applications can theoretically work from any computer, while traditional applications cannot. More importantly, however, is Web applications can work regardless of the operating system, which opens the way for easy cross-platform development allowing large organizations to avoid paying the MS tax. Even with the incredibly limited functionality supported by IE, Web mail, Web IM, Web games and even Web based office suites have significant use. Imagine if they were 10 times as easy to use and 3 times as functional as they are today.
I doubt Web applications will ever take over all the functions of OS specific apps, but hybrid applications and Web apps could easily allow normal users to have all their data backed up and accessible to their old computer and their new computer without having to re-install or buy migration software. This scared the hell out of Microsoft, which is why they have held back Web technologies as much as possible.
Actually what is sad are people who call themselves "christians" but who try to justify unethical acts using poorly translated copies of third hand accounts of religious works mainly borrowed from other religions old testament) but who don't act in accordance with the teachings of Jesus who repeatedly preached the same themes (like nonviolence in the face of violence). It has been historically documented that the people choosing the works that now form the Bible had political considerations and there are also well documented cases where the Bible has been altered by mistranslation or simply because someone wanted to. A good example is the well known story about "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" which appears as a sidenote in the earliest Bibles, copied from a popular morality play of the times, and later included in the text itself by copyists.
I mean how many military soldiers have travelled to a foreign land to commit violence or threaten violence and yet consider themselves "christians" completely ignoring such a major and clear theme of Jesus's teachings?
Competition is good, when it is fair competition in a healthy market.
If Microsoft actually goes and creates a superior product then IE users get a better browser which forces Firefox to either "up it's game" (giving FF users an even better browser) or remain the same while everyone switches back to IE because it's superior.The problem is, what if IE isn't better or what if IE 8 is better but IE 9 is worse? In the first case most people still use IE even though it is inferior, because they assume a normal free market is operating and if there was a better browser Dell or Gateway or Sony would put it on their computer for them. Worse yet, every time a person buys a new computer (every few years) the whole thing is reset and MS gets another shot at being "good enough" that people don't go out of their way to get something better. So if any version of IE is better, more people end up using it than its merits would win in a normal, free market. This allows Microsoft (the monopolist) to use their market share to introduce artificial problems in the offerings of competitors (even if that problem is just Firefox is harder to obtain and install). Worse yet, Microsoft can use their dominance to prevent progress. Right now IE does not even completely support 8-year old Web standards that everyone else does... so those standards go unused by all because no developer can afford to lose 70% of potential customers. In this way the Web has been crippled; prevented from becoming a viable alternative for most applications (which would remove the need to pay MS for having a monopoly on desktop OS's).
Either way everyone gets a better browser. Win-win.Sadly that is not the way it works when one player is leveraging a monopoly in another market. A lot of people end up with a worse browser (regardless of which one they use) as well as a less functional internet.
Why? The browsers were all referring to the release versions, not the beta versions. Opera 9.2 has been feature complete for a while to, and the 9.3 beta is in use. I don't see why this makes a difference. The only real difference I see is availability of alphas and betas is sometimes restricted more than Firefox.
The question is, "of real standards, does Firefox tend to have better support" and I don't see the availability of a Firefox beta, Opera beta, or WebKit beta as being any different.
Did anyone else check out the fake blog/pages? There was a banner ad for a service where you can rent designer purses so you can show them off and then return them without having to pay the full price. It seemed to be a real service. The fact that such a company can stay in business is probably a sign of the apocalypse. Does anyone really know anyone who is so obsessed with designer brands that they would do such a thing? I can actually understand buying a designer product if you believe they actually make better products and are worth the cost. I sometimes pay more for a product from a company who has proven they make quality goods. But do people really buy (or rent) designer products for the sole purpose of showing off... conspicuous consumption of purses?
It makes me appreciate all the intelligent and deviant friends I have all the more. The only brands they consume conspicuously are on the opposite end, with titles like "black label" and "old crow."
Of course it does. Likely it will work on OS X too. Every new format or protocol or technology MS pushes that is in a market they have not dominated works on other platforms. The problem is what happens as soon as MS has enough share of that market. That is when incompatibilities or platform support is intentionally broken to lock-in users, force users to move to MS products, and help reinforce their primary monopoly. The solution is to support only open standard formats with trademarked names, so that MS cannot later break compatibility until the courts order them to stop (many years later after the new market has been destroyed).
I disagree. At my last employer I used OmniWeb for a while (a very niche browser). Most of the Web UI developers used Firefox, but a couple used Konquerer. A few used Safari. A few used Camino. A few used Opera. Regardless of what you used, when you found a bug, you tested it with a couple of other browsers and if the remote Windows box was available (or you had an emulator running), you tested it on multiple browsers and multiple platforms.
The upshot of all of this was, when a bug was listed, it was pretty easy to see which bugs were specific to a given browser. Bugs that appeared in some version of IE, but in no other browser at all, were by far the most common occurrence. Realistically our approach boiled down to, "write to standards; then hack for IE. " Make no mistake, we did not code for some other browser then try to make it work on every one, because that was not needed for the most part. We were programmatically generating Web pages and interfaces from XML data and a couple of databases. For the vast majority of the time, all browsers but IE were close enough to the standards we used (HTML3, CSS2, XHTML) so that there were no discrepancies when tested.
No, here is no browser that supports all of those completely. Some of the specifications are still in draft form for some of those technologies. So far, however, Firefox, Safari, Konquerer, and Opera all have at least some support for every one of the specifications I mentioned. Explorer has some support for some of them, but is behind on all of them compared to every other browser.
The difference is which browser teams are committed to implementing standards going forward and advancing the Web technologies as a real goal and which are interested in doing as little to make the Web a more powerful platform as possible while not incurring serious legal problems. I submit that if Microsoft is really serious about implementing the standards they will have at least some support for all of these Web technologies in IE 8, enough so that it shows they are committed to keeping current with Web technologies instead of freezing the Web at a technological level it was at 8 years ago and making sure it is never useful enough so that people can use Windows or some other platform.