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Hasbro Using DMCA on Facebook Game Apps

Posted by Zonk on Wed Jan 16, 2008 04:25 PM
from the bit-of-overkill-dont-you-think dept.
Government The Courts The Internet News Entertainment Games
Boggle Addict writes "Rather than participating in the online gaming market, Hasbro is suppressing it with litigation. Scrabulous, a Scrabble imitation, is already fighting to prevent being shut down. Today, Hasbro sent out DMCA notices to other apps on Facebook, including Bogglific, a Boggle imitation. Copyright law has has always held very limited protections for games. This may be opening a can of worms for Hasbro.
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Submission: Hasbro uses DMCA on Facebook apps by Anonymous Coward
[+] Games: Facebook Scrabble Rip-off Capitalizes on Mattel's Lethargy 216 comments
mlimber writes "The Facebook app Scrabulous was written by two Scrabble-loving brothers in India, has over 700,000 users, brings in about $25,000 per month in advertising revenue, and is in flagrant violation of copyright law. The corporate owners of Scrabble, Hasbro and Mattel, have threatened legal action against the creators and have made deals with Electronic Arts and RealNetworks to release official online versions of the game. But according to an NYTimes article, 'Scrabulous has already brought Scrabble a newfound virtual popularity that none of the game companies could have anticipated,' and according to one consultant to the entertainment industry, 'If you're Hasbro or Mattel, it isn't in your interest to shut this down.' Hasbro's partner RealNetworks is 'working closely' with the piratical brothers, but Mattel says that 'settling with the [brothers] would set a bad precedent' for other board games going online."
[+] Games: Hasbro Sues Makers of Scrabble-Like Scrabulous 395 comments
Dekortage writes "As today's lawsuit indicates, Hasbro has apparently had enough of Scrabulous, the online word game remarkably similar to Scrabble. Filed in New York, Hasbro's suit is against Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, brothers from Kolkata, India, and asks the court to remove the Scrabulous application from Facebook, disable the Scrabulous.com web site, and grant damages and attorneys fees to Hasbro. Why did Hasbro tale so long to 'protect' its intellectual property rights in court? They waited 'in deference to the fans' until EA had launched the official Scrabble Facebook app earlier this month. EA's version has netted fewer than ten thousand players, versus Scrabulous' estimated 2.3 million. This was the next logical step for Hasbro after filing DMCA takedown notices against Scrabulous in January."
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  • Sounds like... (Score:5, Funny)

    by croddy (659025) * on Wednesday January 16 2008, @04:27PM (#22071674)
    Sounds like Hasbro wants to have a Monopoly on word games.

    • Re:Sounds like... (Score:5, Funny)

      by mcmonkey (96054) on Wednesday January 16 2008, @04:31PM (#22071732) Homepage
      Just wait until the Tic-Tac-Toe folks find out about Hollywood Squares.

    • Re:Sounds like... (Score:5, Funny)

      by CSMatt (1175471) on Wednesday January 16 2008, @04:32PM (#22071742)
      Nope. That's Parker Brothers.

      • Re:Sounds like... (Score:5, Informative)

        by deinol (210478) on Wednesday January 16 2008, @06:18PM (#22073158) Homepage
        Sounds like Hasbro wants to have a Monopoly on word games.

        Nope. That's Parker Brothers.

        Correct. Which is owned by Hasbro. Hasbro *has* a monopoly on board games. At least, on the board games that appear in general stores like Target or Walmart.

        List of companies Hasbro owns, stolen shamelessly from Wikipedia:

                * Avalon Hill (an imprint of Wizards of the Coast, see below)
                * Claster Television
                * Coleco
                * Galoob
                * Kenner
                * Maisto
                * Milton Bradley
                * Parker Brothers
                * Playskool
                * Selchow and Righter
                * Tiger Electronics
                * Tonka
                * Wizards of the Coast
                * Wrebbit

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by tepples (727027)

          Hasbro *has* a monopoly on board games. At least, on the board games that appear in general stores like Target or Walmart.

          I have seen both "Apples to Apples" and "Scene It?" games in the board game section of Wal-Mart stores in Fort Wayne, Indiana. "Apples to Apples" is Mattel/Out of the Box, not Hasbro. Likewise, "Scene It?" is Screenlife, not Hasbro.

          List of companies Hasbro owns, stolen shamelessly from Wikipedia:

          * Avalon Hill (an imprint of Wizards of the Coast, see below)
          * Claster Television
          * Coleco
          * Galoob

          Which means Hasbro bought the goodwill associated with Codemasters' Game Genie product, which Galoob Toys marketed in North America. So are we seeing an about-face from Galoob v. Nintendo [wikipedia.org]?

    • Re:Sounds like... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Kuukai (865890) on Wednesday January 16 2008, @04:41PM (#22071866) Journal

      Sounds like Hasbro wants to have a Monopoly on word games.
      Yeah. If they aren't careful they might find their feet caught in a Mousetrap, with a proverbial Twister of counterlitigation headed in their direction. Boy, then they'll be Sorry. Their Battleship is pretty much sunk, man. They just don't have a Clue...
    • Nah, they just don't want to take a Risk.

    • Re:Sounds like... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Eggplant62 (120514) on Wednesday January 16 2008, @05:29PM (#22072528)
      Nice pun, but other than greed, what motivates these companies to keep such a lock-in on their products? We're not talking about products that are brand spanking new and are threatened with extinction if people start using alternatives; these are products that have been around for ages and ages, since before I was born in '62, and will probably stay around for a long time yet to come. They've made their money from them and then some.

      Instead of wasting it on lawyers and legal fees, why not spend the money on innovating new games and or new forms of already present games, since obviously someone else is providing what they either have not been able to provide or cannot?

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by NormalVisual (565491)
        ...these are products that have been around for ages and ages, since before I was born in '62, and will probably stay around for a long time yet to come. They've made their money from them and then some.

        Wait, you're not ACTUALLY suggesting that copyright be allowed to work the way it was originally intended, are you? Don't you know that it's not about encouraging new stuff, it's all about milking your old stuff for years and years, down through the generations, thus allowing you to sit on your ass and r

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by eh2o (471262)
            It's not just a matter of confusion -- by means of sufficient similarity "Scrabulous" is leveraging the brand-recognition of the Scrabble trademark for the purpose of advertisement. At the same time it dilutes the identity of the mark as what one thinks of as Scrabble now becomes Scrab* or some such variant. So, it is both a type of IP theft and causes damage to the trademark by dilution.

            Second the issue of confusion applies to people who are not necessarily familiar with the game -- granted most people a

  • Oblig. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Naughty Bob (1004174) on Wednesday January 16 2008, @04:30PM (#22071712)
    Don't tase us, Hasbro.

  • Okay, I get it, but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Skyshadow (508) * on Wednesday January 16 2008, @04:30PM (#22071718) Homepage
    I mean, sure, Scrabulous is pretty obviously a Scrabble rip-off -- I think we all know that. But couldn't Hasbro at least have an official Scrabble game ready to replace it? If Scrabulous is forced offline, what the hell am I going to do all day when I'm at work?
    • You could do what most do...look at porn.
    • As long as nothing except gameplay itself is copied, I (and IANAL) think Hasbro's fucked and fucked royally. You can't copyright an idea, only its implimentation.

      You could make a game called "Microsoft" (and I would be surprised if there isn't something like this on the internet already) that is a Monopoly clone, but as long as you use different words and pictures than Monopoly, Parker Brothers would have no legal standing.

      Actually the Flying Furry Freak Brothers (IIRC) had a drug game called "Feds and Head

      • Re:Okay, I get it, but... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by KiloByte (825081) on Wednesday January 16 2008, @05:01PM (#22072156)
        Actually, they do threaten and sue people over the rules, board shape and so on as well.

        Ten years around or so, my roommate created an implementation over the name "Szkrable". Once Hasbro found out, they demanded it to be removed, together with all dissemination of any related software, including the dictionary which later replaced the Polish ispell one (GNU had 300kb of data, MaF had 22MB at the moment). A simple rename didn't work.

        After receiving legal advice and deciding there's no way for a poor student to fight Hasbro whether a copyright over the board shape is valid, my friend came up with totally changed rules and board, making a wordgame which resembled Scrabble in spirit and strategy, but nothing else.

        You can find the thing here [kurnik.org].
    • Buy the Scrabble board game, duh! I mean obviously you just wanted to play scrabble without paying for it, I mean the fact that the sheer convenience of playing it on a computer must have nothing to do with it, and presumably abysmal board game sales will rebound once all the DMCA notices go out...right? At least that's what the overpaid lawyers told the old and senile execs.

    • Re:Okay, I get it, but... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dnoyeb (547705) on Wednesday January 16 2008, @06:03PM (#22072988) Homepage Journal
      Hasbro has had an abysmal online presence for over 10 years. My wife liked scrabble so we bought their offering of computer game. The online part was terrible. They had someone else do it a year later. That version was super sucky too. Then sites like MS gaming site or whatever it was called had their own scrabble and others did too. Hasbro made them ALL stop. I don't get why knock off people can build excellent scrabble online and offline versions, but Hasbro the owner in over 10 years can not make a single one...

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Toonol (1057698)
        I don't get why knock off people can build excellent scrabble online and offline versions, but Hasbro the owner in over 10 years can not make a single one...

        All the imitators probably tried to make a decent product to compete. Hasbro doesn't need to; it can cease&desist all other versions off the internet. No need to invest in programmers, when you've got a lawyer on staff...

  • Not Copyright, Not DMCA, Trademarks (Score:5, Informative)

    by crymeph0 (682581) on Wednesday January 16 2008, @04:32PM (#22071744)

    From the PC World Article [pcworld.com] linked to from the article linked to in the summary:

    "Mattel values its intellectual property and actively protects its brands and trademarks."

    If they don't defend their trademark everytime they see it being used outside of a licensing deal, they can lose it. You may not like it, but that's the way it is. You want it changed, change the law. I'd also like to point out that trademark law, at its best, actually protects consumers from shoddy ripoffs of the product they thought they were buying.

    • Or, they could offer to license it and not be asshat about things. Not everything works best by running to lawyers first. In fact, most things don't work best that way (if at all). Lawyers are best suited as asshats that go after other asshats. If you're first response is to find a lawyer, you're an asshat.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by crymeph0 (682581)

        They probably reached for the lawyers first because they'd already signed a licensing deal for online Scrabble to EA. From the Fortune blog [cnn.com] linked to in the summary:

        a recent licensing deal ... assigned online Scrabble rights to EA (ERTS).

        I don't know the specifics about that deal, but I'll bet exclusivity was part of it. And why shouldn't they have signed an exclusive deal with whoever was going to make them the most money? It is, after all, their trademark, and they get to decide how and who uses

    • I agree. But the articles say that Matel is accusing the makers of copyright infringement, which as your title states it clearly is not.

      • Re:Not Copyright, Not DMCA, Trademarks (Score:5, Insightful)

        by crymeph0 (682581) on Wednesday January 16 2008, @04:45PM (#22071934)

        Yeah. You'd think that a community that cares as much about IP abuses as the tech crowd in these parts would at least know their enemy.

        Hey kids, take some friendly advice: Nobody will care about your arguments, no matter how sound they are on some basic level, if you don't even get the terminology right. At best, you'll just confuse your target audience, and you won't convince them of anything. At worst, they'll think anybody that complains about IP abuse is just another idiot.

    • If they don't defend their trademark everytime they see it being used outside of a licensing deal, they can lose it. You may not like it, but that's the way it is. You want it changed, change the law. I'd also like to point out that trademark law, at its best, actually protects consumers from shoddy ripoffs of the product they thought they were buying.

      You're right and I agree with your reasoning. However, do you mean to suggest that you're likely to confuse "Scrabble" with "Scrabulous"?

      -b
  • Isn't the set of rules of a game essentially an invention? As such, shouldn't it be possible to patent the rules of a game?

    Of course, patents don't last nearly as long as copyrights, so most of the games in question wouldn't be covered (and it's too late to file for existing games, in any case).

  • Wait.. huh? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by webrunner (108849) on Wednesday January 16 2008, @04:36PM (#22071794) Homepage Journal
    I'm confused here.. DMCA is for copyright, that's what the C stands for.. but no part of what was taken was? It's possible it was patented (I believe game mechanics are patented) but there is no DMPA is there? TFA says that they have a "solid case" but I'm not seeing that this "solid case" is what is trying to be used here.. There is no copyright on scrabble. There's a copyright on the scrabble box design, and the scrabble instructions, and perhaps even on the actual design of the board, but not the overall layout of it. There's a trademark on "Scrabble" probably as well, on which "Scrabulous" might infringe.

    I can see a pretty solid case on Trademark or Patent grounds, but copyright is the one thing that WASN'T infringed.

  • I remember back in the late 90s when a fun email version of Scrabble along with all the Boggle sites were shut down by Hasbro. Just a new generation of programmers learning about trademark laws from Hasbro.

    Bummer, since the free games are great advertising for the few people who don't already own hardcopies of the games. But I guess that's the problem - everyone already owns the game, so the the only way to increase revenues is charge for the online versions.

    -Chris

  • Good! (Score:5, Funny)

    by DarthVain (724186) on Wednesday January 16 2008, @04:40PM (#22071846)
    I hate Scrabulous! Everyone stop requesting games, I can't spell you insensitive clods!

    • I hate Scrabulous! Everyone stop requesting games, I can't spell you insensitive clods!
      Okay, so like, which Slashdot editor are you now?

  • Copyright vs Trademark (Score:5, Insightful)

    by saterdaies (842986) on Wednesday January 16 2008, @04:40PM (#22071848)
    I don't want to get into whether they have a copyright on those types of games, but I do want to talk about the trademark issue.

    Calling a Scrabble knockoff Scrabulous or a Boggle knockoff Bogglific is pretty clear gounds for trademark infringement. I mean, this site is Slashdot. If I created a Slashdot.us - and always referred to it as Slashdot.us - it's still too close to being Slashdot. Same with Slashdotic or something like that. People who are casual observers would get confused as to the owner. And in order to keep that trademark, they have to litigate. So, if someone were to create a Slashdot.us site, Slashdot would have to file against them. If they didn't, slashdot would become a generic term like aspirin that anyone could use.

    Now, I'm sure Hasbro doesn't just want them to change the name, but they have a really great case there. While Hasbro is being craptacular here, the Scrabulous people aren't completely innocent - they wanted to play off the Scrabble name to make money.
  • Are games like Scrabble even modern enough to be covered by copyright laws and so forth?

    Is it not like music and such where there's a limited copyright term, and hence is this term not over yet for many of these games? I'm sure some of them are pretty old?
  • Good luck getting rid of pyscrabble. When the code is free for all to share, and anyone can run a server, and the developer isn't maintaining it anymore, who do you sue?
  • Once again we have a commercial entity who, instead of using digital media as a gateway to selling their product, prefer to shut down anything they don't control directly.

    How many younger people who play games almost exclusively online have ever played Scrabble or Boggle? Why would a company like Hasbro want to shut down a site that might actually inspire some online gamers to go buy a physical copy of the game?

    Other than chronic business myopia, that is.

  • Every online venture should know... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by drmofe (523606) on Wednesday January 16 2008, @04:56PM (#22072078)
    ...to set some money aside for legal fees. Why? Because as Brad Blumenthal told me about 15 years ago "Some bastard is going to sue you". It doesn't matter if they are right, or if you are right, it's just going to happen. Waving the white flag that says "I can't afford to fight" just makes the bastard stronger.

    And let's face it, if you are pulling in $25K monthly on virtually no expense base, you can't turn around and bleat about not having the money to fight it.

  • D2 M3 C3 A1 (Score:4, Funny)

    by IronMagnus (777535) on Wednesday January 16 2008, @04:59PM (#22072126)
    DMCA doesn't apply to Scrabble... you can't use abbreviations in scrabble http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrabble#Acceptable_words [wikipedia.org] Unless DMCA falls under the 'regularized' provision... then they should have put a Z on the end to get the triple word score and have 57 points instead of 9

  • This is semi-legitimate (Score:5, Informative)

    by b96miata (620163) on Wednesday January 16 2008, @05:05PM (#22072202)
    Scrabulous isn't an imitation so much as the exact same game save the name, and having the writing on the colored squares explaining which is which. (I always end up GIS'ing up a real scrabble board for reference) Same scoring, same play, same word lists used in scrabble tournaments.

    That said, how fucking old is scrabble? In a rational world any IP protection it had save for the trademark would have gone by the wayside long ago.

  • Hey Hasbro (Score:5, Interesting)

    by syphax (189065) on Wednesday January 16 2008, @05:11PM (#22072312) Journal

    We actually bought a Boggle game recently because of an online boggle-like game (which I won't link to, though if you search for 'web boggle' I suspect you mind find it rather easily...).

    Let me say that again: We started playing a Boggle-like game online. We loved it. But we recognized that it would also be fun to play the real game sometimes (b/c sitting around a table is more social than staring at a screen, etc.). So we bought your damn game.

    Hasbro, I've got four kids under six. I am your wet dream demographic: I have both money and kids, and I love toys. Don't piss me off.

    Try a different strategy. [thepiratesdilemma.com]

  • Boardgame Copyrights (Score:3, Informative)

    by Digital Vomit (891734) on Wednesday January 16 2008, @05:47PM (#22072730) Homepage Journal

    The idea for a game is not protected by copyright. The same is true of the name or title given to the game and of the method or methods for playing it. Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author's expression in literary, artistic, or musical form. US copyright law for games [copyright.gov]
    The US law is similar to the Canadian law WRT boardgames:

    Copyright protects the expression of an idea and not the idea itself. For example, an idea for a board game would not be protected by copyright, but the expression of this idea in the form of written rules and playing instructions would be protected as a literary work. - Canadian Copyright Policy FAQ [pch.gc.ca]

    You can take any existing game, rewrite the rules in your own words (while avoiding the use trademarks, e.g. "Scrabble") and publish it. That is your right. There's no law to stop you from creating your own Scrabble game just so long as it does not infringe on any of Hasbro's trademarks. The rules, method of play, and alphabet are not copyrightable.

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