Scrabulous Returns To Facebook, As Wordscraper

porcupine8 writes "Good news for those that have had a hole in their heart (and Facebook profile) since Hasbro forced Facebook to remove Scrabulous over copyright and trademark issues. The creators of Scrabulous have wasted no time in tweaking the game and have launched a new tile-based game called Wordscraper. In addition to changing the name, they have changed the board look so as not to directly copy the colors, etc of a Scrabble board, and have even made provisions for players to create their own board layout! Interested Scrabulous fans can add the application now. Only time will tell if the changes were extensive enough to keep Hasbro's lawyers at bay."

Copyright broken

[fluffykitty1234]

This is a pretty good example of broken copyright laws. How long has Scrabble been out, 60 years? And because of the crazy long copyright terms now, innovation is being stifled. This is not what copyright was intended for...

DIY boards = infinite cleverness

[Sockatume]

So if Hasbro takes them to court for infringing the board design (which IIRC is far shakier than the misuse of the trademark) then they can just delete that. The immediately available user-created boards which look like original Scrabble are, of course, not Wordscraper's fault.

Re:hexagonal scrabble?

[Oh no, it's Dixie]

I doubt that any of these have reached the popularity or notoriety necessary to trigger the Hasbro Lawyer Machine. Scrabulous was an extremely popular Facebook app, hence why the litigation was directed at that rather than the less important clones.

Good Exposure

[Wiarumas]

I'm sure the creators loved all the press attention they have been recieving lately... additionally, I bet Hasbro regrets not giving these guys job offers rather than legal complaints.

Re:Copyright broken

[geobeck]

How long has Scrabble been out, 60 years? And because of the crazy long copyright terms now, innovation is being stifled.

If you define 'innovation' as copying someone else's idea in almost every detail.

Re:hexagonal scrabble?

[Sockatume]

Let's not forget that Hasbro hasn't so much as a patent on Scrabble itself, just a vague claim to copyright on the rules (which may not apply) and a trademark (Scrabble name, and perhaps the appearance of the board and tiles). If there's no risk of mistakenly assuming that the Scrabble-likes are actually Scrabble, then there's no trademark infringement to answer for.

Re:Copyright broken

[stonecypher]

You can't copyright the idea of how you play the game, but you can copyright the board artwork.

There is nothing broken about this. At all. This is, in fact, exactly as it should be. Otherwise, all someone would have to do to duplicate my game would be to change the title.

Game designs and rules are unprotected. Titles, presentation, artwork and appearances are protected. This is ideal. No brokenness here.

Re:It could have gone a lot better....

[SirShmoopie]

Acknowledgement that a thing breaks the law is not the same as saying that you agree with the law that was broken.

Re:It could have gone a lot better....

[the_weasel]

I also park illegally on occasion, and sometimes drive a few miles above the speed limit. I have been known file my taxes late, and have stolen music by downloading it. Sometimes I accidentally throw away paper without recycling it.

Scrabulous was a popular, well implemented version of a game I own no less than 4 boards for. i probably have purchased anywhere from 10 -15 boards over the past 20 years.

I enjoyed it, so I played it. Now that wordscraper is available, I will play that.

Those are all illegal, getting caught has penalties, and I know that. I may not agree with the laws, but when I get caught I pay the consequences, without whining or trying to come up with some sort of convoluted justification for my actions.

Not all laws are equal in my books. Murder is not a law I break with the same equanimity as a local parking ordinance.

If you have managed to live your life ethically pure, then I applaud you.

Re:Copyright broken

[2nd Post!]

You're claiming a failure to trademark or copyright chess or shogi implies trademark or copyright is broken?

As for the "why no knockoff Scrabble", it's because people don't want to play a knockoff, they want to play Scrabble. If you want a proper example...
Witness the multitude of playing cards available; every single one is interchangeable, but each one is still protected by trademark.

Re:Copyright broken

[Mistshadow2k4]

No brokenness? You can't copy a game that you played before you turned ten when you're an old man, and you say that's not broken? That's ridiculous! At this rate, everything in our culture now will still be copyrighted/trademarked when our great-grandchildren are adults and we're long in our graves. Copyrights were not meant to be extended across generations. They were meant to protect innovators for part of their lives to generate income, not grant a corporation a monopoly on part of our culture for 6 decades.

Re:Copyright broken

[Miseph]

"after the creator/inventor is dead should the copyright still be in place?"

In fairness, it probably should. Otherwise I could see it being encouragement for some people to try and make the copyright holder dead in order to better evade it.

Death is also problematic when corporations are able to hold copyrights because it's not something they are subject to. If you're waiting for my immortal corporation to die in order for the copyright to expire, you'll be waiting a very long time.

Re:Copyright broken

[p0tat03]

Actually, in this case I think the claim was that Scrabulous was infringing upon the Scrabble trademark. IMHO trademarks *should* last as long as the company is in operation. There's no reason why a company should have to lose its trade name over the course of time.

Re:Copyright broken

[croddy]

Well, the reason there's no scrabble clone with discs instead of rectangular tiles is that discs don't tile as well, and the board would be a mess. This is not a problem for a computer game, of course, but would be impractical in a physical game set.

Re:Copyright broken

[multisync]

Because this is not a copyright issue, there is no sixty year timeframe involved.

I'm just going by what the various articles have said. Like this [pcworld.com] one, which says "News wire service Reuters is reporting Hasbro and Mattel are demanding that Facebook remove the popular Facebook application Scrabulous due to copyright infringement." Or this [cnet.com] one, which says "Hasbro on Thursday filed a copyright and trademark lawsuit in New York against the creators of the ad-supported Scrabulous application, which boasts an astonishing half-million daily users." Or this [nytimes.com] one, which says "Hasbro, the Rhode Island company that owns the trademark to the 60-year-old board game, Scrabble, on which Scrabulous is closely based, has also asked Facebook to remove the game under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ..."

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.

As a game designer, I would like to remind you that in the eyes of the law, for a very good reason, game designs are not art.

As an intelligent human being who has actually looked around and noticed what happens in the real world, I would like to remind you that a can of Campbell's soup can be art. Art is not a thing, it is the act of creation and appreciation. I've even taken some pretty artistic dumps in my day.

Spend less time worrying about what should or should not be, and more time understanding the situation correctly.

Spend more time actually reading up on the subject we are commenting on, and less dispensing unsolicited advise to people who didn't ask for it.

Re:Copyright broken

[Kangburra]

How do you keep all the discs upright, you don't. Disc orientation is irrelevant, whereas in Scarabble it's critical. Words with upside down and slanted letters would inhibit the fun of the game. No making italic words isn't worth extra points! ;-)

Re:It could have gone a lot better....

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh... If it gives you a frisson, fine, but I'm afraid you're not doing or abetting anything illegal.

You need to understand what Hasbro have a legal right to protect - which in this case comes down to trademarks and copyright (and, no, I'm not a lawyer, but the broad sweep of this stuff isn't rocket-science). "Scrabble" is a trademark, and Hasbro are entitled to protect it from dilution - stop other people using it, or overly-close, confusable variations, without permission. "Scrabulous" was too close for comfort, so the name had to go. But when it comes to the game itself, they're on shakier ground, because games aren't subject to copyright - only the creative works involved in producing a particular version. So Hasbro can have a copyright over the way they word the rules they publish, but *not* over the concepts those rules express, for example. They have copyright over their board art, but *not* about elements of the board layout essential to the playing of the game. Hasbro could probably argue in front of a court that the precise board layout of the commercially-available game is a creative work too, but whether they'd succeed or not I have no idea - the layout has characteristics that dictate game-play that are neither random nor artistic. Either way, though, that's almost certainly been addressed by not tying people down to a single layout.

Re:Copyright broken

[poot_rootbeer]

WHAT MONEY?

The money you mentioned three sentences later:

These other guys built it, made money off it

I can't believe the furor over this. The only way that it could have been more clear that the Scrabulous developers were profiting off of intellectual property that did not belong to them would be if the app had literally been named "Scrabble" and scanned in the artwork directly from Hasbro's product.

Whether you believe intellectual property, as a legal concept, is just or not is a different issue, but under the current law Scrabulous was a violation. Kudos for the Wordscraper devs for finding a way now to preserve the core mechanics of the game without abusing trademark or copyright, but quite frankly it should have been done six months ago.