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Creators of Scrabble knockoff sued

ANICK JESDANUN

Associated Press

Latest comment posted at 12:08 PM EDT 26/07/08

Scrabble owner Hasbro moves against Scrabulous creators less than two weeks after releasing an authorized version of Scrabble for Facebook ...Read the full article

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  1. Iain's Opinion from Canada writes: At what point do things become public domain? Mozart, Bethoven et al are public domain, drugs become available to competition after 7 years or so so why not games?
  2. Sask Langer from Canada writes: NOTHING becomes public domain anymore. It becomes Intellectual Property, for as long as Mickey Mouse has been around... plus 50 years.
  3. Joe C from Canada writes: The article suggests that Scrabulous is being sued for copyrights and trademark infringements.
    AFAIK, trademarks do not expire. Perhaps Scrabulous is too close to Scrabble for Hasbro's liking.
    Copyrights do expire but only after a long time. I'm not sure if Scrabulous infringe on Scrabble's copyrights. Scrabulous no doubt borrowed ideas, but was in all likelihood written from scratch.
    Drugs was mentioned, but those are covered by patents. These hare shorter time spans.
  4. Tom W from Vancouver, Taiwan writes: Classless jerks. They could have easily hired the brothers and asked for royalty sharing from the original app. Hasbro, not having the initiative to go and develop an app themselves in a timely fashion are now punishing young innovative folks - it simply just reeks. I'll pass on Scrabble, in any form.
  5. K McIntyre from Oshawa, Canada writes: Joe, the name 'Scrabulous' is probably the only aspect of the lawsuit that will stick. If the Scrabulous people change the name, then there likely would be no injunction and minimal damages awarded (because Scrabulous has not deprived Scrabble of revenue or done any damage to the Scrabble brand).

    Copyright infringement would only apply if they did something like copy the instruction manual word for word.

    You can patent board games, and indeed Scrabble was protected by patent many years ago, but patent protection lasts only 20 years and Scrabble was developed (I think) in the 50s.

    FWIW, copyrights expire either 50 or 70 years after the death of the author, depending on jurisdiction. Corporate copyrights last 75 or 95 years after publication.
  6. K McIntyre from Oshawa, Canada writes: This is pretty shameless, come to think of it. Scrabulous built a little market niche, doing no harm to Hasbro, but Hasbro sees an opportunity to seize that niche using a flimsy legal excuse to shut the competition down. It's an abuse of the legal system.

    It would be nice to see Scrabulous start raising a legal fund. They might get enough support to mount a decent defense.
  7. Albin Forone from Canada writes: I've been playing the board game Se since childhood, recently enjoying Ss as equivalent, and even now appreciate that I don't need a Facebook account to play the game. Se was much too slow to get with the online format - I actually bought their CD-ROM ten years ago, and a lousy piece of work it was, so don't feel any weeps for the original. While there are several key aspects of the Se board game that are replicated by Ss, it will be interesting to see if a claim will stick that replicating a wood and cardboard item in a digital form constitutes infringement, and whether that abysmal CD version is relied on by Hasbro. (Not to say I wouldn't try Mattel's version of Se if it's offered in Canada.)
  8. Robert MacDonald from Canada writes: Once again, Corporate greed trying to stomp out innovation and creativity in the name of profit

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