While I'm not much in favor of lawsuits because of copyright infringement, it seems that Scrabulous is an almost exact copy of the original game... so this looks fair enough.

The way one has to think here is: Is Scrabulous making profit because of Scrable marketing? Do people play it because it is similar to Scrable? Original Scrable gamers might me switching or just playing Scrabulous because the system works the same way?

Bokusatsu_Tenshi

@Irenicus-the one and only: I know nothing of that member picture stealing scam thing, but Facebook doesn't have to be about who has the most friends. I'm actually slowly deleting many of my "friends", cause they're cluttering my friends list. It's a great tool to use as communication. Most of these applications are really dumb and totally clutter facebook up though... Oh well. At least it's free, widely used and works great for other things.

perdevious

@Mact: Cute? rebel? I don't see that as me being a rebel. I think it is stupid, pure and simple, facebook, myspace and lunarstorm is just really, really dumb to me. Meh

Maybe you can explain the point to me then?

Irenicus-the one and only

@ceilingFANBOY:
As I said, when it's pronounced _properly_. Many people who grow up speaking English can't pronounce Greek characters the way they are currently pronounced in Greece. Even my college Greek professor had a tough time with some of them, particularly Zeta (which is supposed to be pronounced something like "zdeta"). Oh, he could provide an example pronunciation just to acknowledge that he wasn't going to force you to say it that way, and then he'd teach you the semi-anglicized form.

The other side of it is that the frats and scientists have come up with much more anglicized pronunciations for everything, just to make them simpler to use. They say "pie" (Pi) when it's actually "pee", "phai" (Phi) when it's "phee", "sai" (Psi) when it's "psee" (notice a pattern here?), "zeta" (Zeta) when it's "zdeta", and (worst of all), they say "chai" (Chi) or "kai" when it should sound like "he" preceeded by the sound of hocking a loogy. I've never even tried to join a fraternity, and my Greek classes were a lot more recent than any physics classes I've had, so I can't remember the anglicized pronunciation for Xi, but I think you might be getting Xi (Ξξ) with Chi (Χχ).

Purple Dave

@Irenicus-the one and only:

Aren't you a cute little rebel.

You obviously missed the point.

Mact

Oddly enough, their is an entire NES emulator on Facebook and has been for at least a year.

Nintendo has yet to touch it.

Which is odd considering how many VC games are available through the application.

Mact

Facebook didnt actually make Scrabulous by the way. It's not part of the Facebook product, so to speak. All Facebook has to do to avoid liability is to close down the application.

Sunjammer

@catapult37: Yeah, every online word game has crap dictionaries AFAIK.

Word Racer on Yahoo Games once told me that "square is not a word."

And of course none will accept anything NAUGHTY.

TechnoDestructo

@verrius: I won't dispute that -- you are right that there are significant downsides, and I am all for further refinement of the DMCA, but think about the state of the law prior to the DMCA. No service provider would be willing to take the risk in the first place! Try picturing how a service like YouTube could have existed without the DMCA. Rather than police all of the user content, it would be much safer to just bar user interaction entirely.

Maybe we can shift the burden a bit further onto the copyright owner, but this is a brilliant start.

Throtex

Scrabulous uses the official Scrabble dictionaries SOWPODS and TWL. You'd use one or the other of these dictionaries if you played in a proper Scrabble tournament. There are some outrageous inclusions and omissions when it comes to two letter words, but it's all carefully thought out to make a well balanced game.

I'm not sure about the rights or wrongs of this. The game has been around since 1948 - 60 years. There are all kinds of Monopoly ripoffs since the courts ruled that it was allowed. It'll be interesting to see what happens.

ukslim

I wonder what letters they sent them. If they sent them X, W, and Q, then it is worth something. However, if they only sent them R, L, S, T, N, and E, those letters are worthless and Facebook should ignore them.

@Purple Dave: I thought it was pronounced k-eye, for things like the chi squared test in statistics.

ceilingFANBOY: sponsor me for PolarBearPlunge, link in profile

I hate Facebook, and myspace and every other pathetic site where the goal is to show off how many "friends" you got. I thought popularity contests ended with highschool, I guess not.

As for Facebook in specific with this case, this is not the first time they do stuff like this, reminds me when they stole members pictures and then sold them to advertisement companies claiming they can do this thanks to their ToS...
People should not support this company!

Irenicus-the one and only

Dammit! There goes my ratings.

indiemike

BTW, according to the official website, a _copyright_ application for the game itself was granted on December 1, 1948. The name was granted a _trademark_ on December 16, 1948. Previous iterations of the game (Lexico and Criss-Crosswords) were both turned down for _patent_ applications, so it's unclear if a patent was ever granted. Under US law, the trademark lasts as long as it is in current use with the original holder. The copyright would have lasted 28 years (through the end of 1976), at which point a renewal would have had to be applied for...except in 1976 a piece of legislation went through that changed how copyright works in the US, making it based on the lifespan of the author plus a specified additional number of years, or just a fixed number of years from date of first use for a "work-for-hire". I don't know which of these new clauses applies to Scrabble, though I believe it would be considered a work-for-hire as the creator was not the one who published it. In that case, it should be protected until the end of 2063. Alternately, if it's based on the death of the creator, it should last even longer.

Regardless, they can go after Facebook because Facebook is effectively the publisher, and is much more vulnerable to US-based litigation than a couple of guys in India. Also, they've got clear claims on both copyright and trademark violations, so I'd predict that they either force a removal, or end up being able to negotiate a royalties agreement of their own.

Purple Dave

I think that's pretty dickish of Mattel, myself.

Mr. Fap☆Fap!

@Leetables: There is indeed a Scrabble DS. It even suggests "naughty" words.

agies

Dammit! That's half the reason I joined!

PooPooKaKaBumBum

Aww man, I only just started playing this. Turns out I can be quite locquacious when i put my mind to it.

Bugger.

PaddyStardust

Geeze, that was a terrible claim, but you get the idea.

Throtex

@StealthBear: This isn't a patent case, but you can patent the functional aspects of pretty much anything. For example:

A board game comprising:
- a plurality of tiled spaces, wherein one or more of the tiled spaces provides a score multiplier; and
- a plurality of character tiles,
wherein the character tiles are placed on the tiled spaces.

Throtex

Thank God someone put a stop to that Scrabulous game. I was wondering how long beforeTrobulous,Monopulos,Sorryulus etc.

jackal888

Scraddle. There you go, all fixed up Korean-style.

fyren

@Deadeyereborn: Haha! Good one.

mikomichan

Does anyone know to what extend you can patent a game design? I'm not just talking hardware (we've seen plenty of motion control lawsuits there), but more about core mechanics of a game.

Obviously, most AAA console titles are too complex to be able to patent the design in any way, but what about casual games, where the core mechanics usually are more apparent to the average gamer.

StealthBear

You won't see me angrily jumping to the defense of Facebook. They can license the game like Yahoo and everyone else.

jettokisora

Having played Scrabulous (I don't think it was anything to do with Facebook when I played it though) I can easily see why they're doing this. It is a direct copy of Scrabble but with a different name (and the annoying prospect of the other player asking "a/s/l?" when you're trying to play a game).

PhotoBoy

Hasbro/Mattel should score a win with this by making a deal where they get a portion of the advertisement revenues. Plus, it's a lot better than the digital offering from EA Games.

mikomichan

@Deadeyereborn: yeah I can tell by the way you wrote "scabble" :P

amost

That's a shame because it looks quite nice. I used to play this Scrabble ripoff with my roommate in college over the network. Why we didn't just use the actual game is beyond me.

I remember that Scrabble game show. Man, I loved that. Hm.. wonder if theres a good Scrabble game on DS. NY Times Crossword is close enough, though I guess.

Leetables

Uh. Hasbro or Mattel?

Fishballs

Meh I hate scabble and by hate I mean I suck at it.

Deadeyereborn

If Apple didn't get to win Look and Feel, neither should Hasbro.

SaintWaldo

Took long enough. I was wondering when Hasbro would get their act together and ask for it to be shut down.

Throtex

Hell, people don't even call it "Scrabulous". They just call it Scrabble. I'd say that Mattel has a solid case, and probably some solid profits coming their way out of the case.

Me? I'd rather play 'Unspeakable Words'...

Tonx

That's understandable.

Icharius

That's pretty fair I'd say.

Maleficence

Scrabble sucks no matter how you spell it

ballaboy311

Nooooo! I loved Scrabulous.
My roommate and I sit around and sing, "The Scrabulous, oh, the Scrabulous, Scrabulous.....the Scrabulous."

You know, like "Glamorous?"

The Fergie song?

No?

I think I'll go now.

mermaidkween

Meh....I log into my FaceBook account once every 3 months....I don't see the appeal.

d1sco_d3ath

I'm also surprised this didn't happen sooner, and now I'll never visit facebook again... Only joined because I heard about Scrabble, if that goes, so do I.

MikeSheehan

Badasscat is totally right about copyrights and patents, and that's an important distinction (as well as what are called "branded elements", to use some law-speak) in this case. However, To suggest Facebook is the "little guy" in this case is sort of comical (no offense, badasscat). Facebook is not even remotely a little guy, even compared to Mattel/Hasbro. Appears to me like Facebook is finally getting the cease and desist they've deserved on this game for a while. Which is kind of a shame, because who doesn't like free Scrabble?

biffpow

Completely understandable, gotta protect your investments.

OpiZA

@StealthBear: The courts have historically granted very limited protection to game mechanics. That's one reason why people like Jeff Minter can get away with making games like "Space Giraffe", which is clearly a Tempest knockoff.

Personally, I doubt Hasbro/Mattel would win if they took this to court. But then, these are strange times we live in when it comes to copyright, so who knows how they'd rule at this point. Big business usually wins against the little guy these days.

btw, there are differences between copyrights and patents. You can't copyright game mechanics. That's why the courts take such a dim view of copyright claims in cases like this. You can patent certain things, but patents expire after 15 years. Any patents on Scrabble would have expired long ago.

badasscat

@Black_Ops_19: Curse you, Facebook programmers, for making a digital version of OUR game before we did!

Intellectual property laws. If they wanted to make a digital version, the Facebook application makers should have struck a deal, rather than outright ripping it off. I love Scrabble. I DETEST plagiarism.

TitillatedOcelot (NinjaBall [psn] Callabrantus [xbl])

@Throtex: And the patent (in the US) would expire in 13 years. How old is Scrabble?

This is a DMCA copyright thing, obviously, as copyrights now outlive everyone. I think it's bullshit, and the world should own Scrabble now, not Hasbro. I mean, seriously, how has Scrabble changed in the last 10 years? It hasn't. Give it up, Hasbro. Endeavors like Scrabulous were actually in the original notion of copyright. See what happens when you elect Sonny Bono?

SaintWaldo

@ssjmichael: It's probably licensed, then.

Throtex

Curse you, Facebook programmers, for making a digital version of our game before we did!

Black_Ops_19

[www.nytimes.com]
Here is the link from the bottom of the article. Seems to be a bit of borked HTML there. No worries.

2K Ghede

What about Yahoo's Literati game? It's pretty much exactly like Scrabble and has been there for years

ssjmichael

They also forced Bogglific (Boggle) to be pulled

Dracil

Qi? That's a word? Oh, i'm so using that next time

kidko

From what I understand the actual game mechanics can't be copyrighted, but the name is trademarked so a name change will be the likely outcome.

CyberSkull

Mav,

That's true but Hasbro has been very protective of their license for Scrabble in the past. It's one of their most recognized and profitable board-games.

Facebook will likely have to change the look and name of the game a little more, a la Literati on Yahoo. Or, like FunkyJ said, sell a license to Facebook.

benfinkel

they should just buy it out

toneroni

Given how popular Scrabulous is on facebook, they'd be stupid to can it altogether.

Hopefully some deals can be made, money be paid, and the game be re-branded.

FunkyJ

Actually, this lawsuit will probably fail. Board Games such as this have different copyright rules than other media do. It's been ruled in the past that once a board game is in the real world for play, people can copy the idea of the game without problem. They can't copy the exact setup/name, but a knockoff game that's very similar is perfectly okay. How do you think people got away with all those little game sets that had 100 board games in 1, where most of the games seemed like knockoffs of normal games?

That and there have been scrabble-type games online for years without Hasbro coming after them. But in regards to the law, unlike other media, Hasbro has no case here. You can copy the look and feel of anything, you just can't make a perfect copy of it. So the game has the look and feel of scrabble, but since it isn't scrabble, it's fai.

maverickewu

@perdevious: Hmm, well I just got bored with the, "yo, remember me? no? well add me to facebook OKI? call me right? right?" lol

As for the pictures, ever heard of users mugshots on advertisements for products that they like. It is a new strategy, they call "social advertising"!

It is for real, remember to not act supprised if you see your face on a product in the near future.

Irenicus-the one and only

Suck Frabble.

WaterMedia

haha tit.

seuki8

Just replace it with "Monopolous" and be done with it.

dowingba

@catapult37:
"Xi" is a Greek character (sounds like "ksee", when pronounced _properly_, and not in its anglicized form). It's been coopted into use in the English language by both physicists/mathematicians and fraternities/sororities. Greek organizations use it in their signature letters, and it's used in math as a variable, often of a specific type.

Purple Dave

You know...I can see the argument for wanting to protect your license, but I don't see the practicality of it. People are looking for a different experience when they sit down to play Scrabble as opposed to games of Scrabulous drawn out over days, weeks, months. If anything, the emergence of Scrabulous was a reminder to me that I really wanted to pick up a copy of Scrabble.

Chrysalis

Crecente, they just had a question on Jeopardy the other day regarding the origin of Scrabble, specifically that it was a game created by blending anagrams and crossword puzzles. So no, I don't think there's much likelihood of ancient origins there, considering you need an alphabet (Chinese languages use logographies and syllabaries, not alphabets), and you need fixed word spellings (which English didn't even have at the time of the American Revolution...and still doesn't, when you consider how the Brits still use those anachronistic spellings for words like aluminum and color).

@badasscat:
And yet Wizards of the Coast managed to use a game mechanic to leverage their way into receiving royalties from or outright buying several other CCG companies, even though a letter had surfaced that showed the head of the company had actually _asked_ Steve Jackson (the man, not the company) if he could borrow that specific game mechanic from the old Illuminati box game.

Purple Dave

@diablofreak: Oh god shut up. Read up on the trademark system.

NoBullet

Letters have been sent to Facebook

Wonder how many points they won.

NoBullet

when someone does a better job than you, sue them! its the american way!

diablofreak

@cataput37: XI is good, and not even obscure to anyone who's seen the Greek alphabet. But the two-letter words are so useful, there's a button which brings up the complete list for your convenience. If you want to challenge words, you have to set up a Challenge game, which allows phonys and disallows looking things up in the online dictionary. Regular games only allow legal plays.

These elements are actually an important part of Scrabulous's success, and are distinct from playing Scrabble on a board in your living room, so not even the game mechanics are completely taken from the board game.

TFox2

Hasbro should've done a deal with Scrabuluous developers, like the developers asked for. They've built a fabulous implementation and have a big following; it's one of the top Facebook apps. But by going the lawsuit route, the best they can hope for is to get "Scrabulous" to change their name. The game mechanics are unpatented and not copyrightable, all Hasbro owns is the trademarked name. Even a name change is not a slam-dunk; does "Scrabulous" make you think "Hasbro-licensed Scrabble(tm) product, spelled funny for some reason", or "crossword game, probably similar to Scrabble(tm) but not Scrabble(tm)"? If a judge thinks it's the latter, the risk of confusion is minimal, and Scrabulous can keep their name.

TFox2

I actually really like Scrabulous -- my only problem with it is that the dictionary is crap and there's no way to challenge a word. I was playing a 3-person game with my wife (an English PhD student) and a friend of mine... who proceeded to score bigtime with "XI." Which is not an English word in any respect. But the dictionary allowed it, so we were screwed! My wife decided she didn't like Scrabulous as much after that. :-)

catapult37

@Throtex: As I understand it, it only protects companies who actually comply with takedown notices. While well intentioned, this leads to a lot of companies generating bogus takedown requests, that the recipients are then forced (due to lack of resources to investigate all claims) to take down, or risk litigation in the case of a legitimate claim. While in theory its a good thing...its proven to be just another stick to beat people into submission with...(and that's just regarding the safe harbor provisions...).

verrius

Completely understandable. I play the game a lot (because it's built into facebook it's far more convenient than any other Scrabble-type game). But really, it's no different at all from the board game, and is making its creators (not facebook, a couple guys from india) quite a lot of money (through advertising, etc).

Of course, they'd be smarter to work out a deal where they just get a cut of the profits. And change the name, of course.

thefais

yeah it was a couple of Indians - Mattel/Hasbro have been rather stupid here in going for facebook.

I hope it gets settled with a simple revenue share or if the creators win against the crappy game companies (as they are these days) - Woo Hoo!

Darkedge

@MrSoursop: The comedy of that is, of course, that people who are hyper-critical of the DMCA without understanding what it means, like "SAINTWALDO", supra, don't realize that if a valid copyright cause of action is asserted, the DMCA might actually serve to protect Facebook. The DMCA is one of the best things to happen to freedom of expression on the Internet, and it's sad it gets such a bad rap.

Throtex

facebook itself didn't programme the app. it was a couple of indian guys i believe.

MrSoursop

@SaintWaldo: I already said this wasn't a patent case ... and patents in the United States expire 20 years from the earliest priority date, plus any adjustment (or 17 years from issue, prior to 1995).

@badasscat: There are plenty of copyrightable elements here, though. Color selection for the score multiplier spaces doesn't affect the game mechanics and is in no way functional. You might even be able to argue that the particular scores used for each tile are simply expressive.

The big issue, of course, is the trademark matter, and there would appear to be some serious likelihood of confusion arguments to be made.

Throtex