Shit. With the muscle behind EA, I guess there goes our Scrabulous. I'd sort of hoped it had just all blown over after the first legal threats, but no such luck.

Thing is, Scrabulous extends beyond Facebook - they have their own website, community - and the best part - e-mail Scrabulous without login for those that don't want to bother with any strings.

My mother - who has no interest in digital gaming at all - has become flat-out addicted to this game. I showed it to her some time before Hasbro started making noises and since then she plays nearly every day with a friend of hers.

The Scrabulous design is near flawless, I can't imagine the EA version being anything but a convoluted mess and wouldn't be surprised if they tried to start charging somewhere along the line. It's too bad, I was just beginning to warm up EA but this begins to put them back in the seat of greedy-bastard. Gr.

sir_carrot

@Anaralia: My thoughts exactly. I don't think they're claiming patent infringement or anything. And copyright only applies to expressions - not the idea itself. This may be a precedent-setting case though, as people argue back and forth about what "expression" means in terms of game rules.

stevesan

What's the basis of this suage? There's no patent apparently...why can't they just change the name of Scrabulous to...oh i dunno, Spell-tastic?

stevesan

Hasbro only owns the copyright to the name "Scrabble" not the game itself and then only in the US and Canada, Mattel owns it in the rest of the world.

Facebook aren't in breach of copyright, because they are not using the copyrighted name and the game itself is not copyrighted. Indeed, the exact same game can be purchased under other names around the world.

Anaralia

@A Pimp Named DaveR: ahh yes.. now that makes much more sense to me. Please excuse my ignorance.

Satis24

Isn't this old news? I remember hearing about this a few months back : /

karamashi

Facebook is serious business. I'm not sure what they want to do for suing the creators when distribution isn't within their control. Their C&D was directed at Facebook by my understanding.

Isn't Facebook, then, responsible for the application's continued circulation?

Heliophage

Scrabulous makes me think of Zoidberg saying "It's a fabulous CRABULOUS day!

Captain_Collide

Well, I guess the big corps won on this one. That's okay, this kind of thing only leads to innovation and perhaps an application that will blow EA scrapple out of the water. And yes, I did mean SCRAPPLE.

thirstypilgrim97

@Satis24: Lets I invented and sold...the yo-yo....and then you built yo-yo's and gave them away for free. I'd be pissed. I have never played game but from the pic is looks like a digital knock-off of Scrabble. I think Hasbro has every right to sue and really facebook should have removed this when they were asked.

One could argue that this digital version doesn't effect sales of the baord game but either way it would be pure speculation. Who's going to do the research on that? Seeing how you can't prove the effect on sales created by the facebook version I would make facebook take the game down and be done with all this. Maybe a SMALL fine.

SAKY

Who would continue to play scrabulous after the real game showed up? why sue?

SmokeFemur

@Gouki4u's avatar has a severe case of Jekyll and Hyde: That is a fair point. I just don't know who in gods name would have the money for that.

@albenotron: I never thought about what they make in advertising.

Like that article says Scrabulous was probably helping Hasbro by rekindling a love of a Scrabble like game. Now they just look greedy for trying to stop Scrabulos from being played.

Satis24

One significant issue... if this goes through, non-US users will be able to play Scrabble on Facebook. Hasbro only has the US rights to the game, and so have to region-lock their version for the very reason that they're saying the Scrabulous guys need to be sued.

Boo.

sebFlyte

@Satis24: @Neo-Senku: The World's Finest Pervert:

Intellectual property is property, in the same way that your car (assuming you own it, and don't lease it or borrow it from someone else) is your property. The test isn't whether someone is making money off of your property, it's whether someone is using it at all.

To use the car example -- if I steal your car from you, it isn't a defense to my theft if I say, "oh, but I didn't rent out the car to anyone, so I didn't profit from my action". I still took your car, depriving YOU of YOUR right to use it, rent it, shoot at it with a pellet gun, or whatever else you can legally do with YOUR property.

In the same way, it doesn't matter that both Scrabulous and the Hasbro Scrabble are both free to use. If the Scrabble board and gameplay are protected intellectual property -- and, in my non-expert legal opinion, they are and Scrabulous is unquestionably an infringing use -- then Hasbro and ONLY Hasbro can use it, and only they can make the decision as to whether or not it will be free. If Scrabulous is infringing, then it is the makers of Scrabulous who are making that decision with respect to the property, not its rightful owners.

There are exceptions unique to IP, such as the Fair Use Doctrine. But I don't think they apply here.

A Pimp Named DaveR

it really depends on if theyre publishing the software doesnt it? If theyre just selling advertisment feed in the application there isnt really anything that facebook should be able to legally besides maybe sue Facebook itself

SaanZ

See what having a herd of 6 figure/case lawyers can do for you?.

Its not like the creator of Scrabulous is making significant profit, if at all.

This is EA's way of grabbing all of Scrabulous core user's attention saying "Hey, the real deal has arrived".

PsycheE

@Satis24: Actually scrabulous's creators were making around 25k a week on advertising...but thats not the point of the lawsuit. The main reason is to get the people to switch over.

albenotron

They're just trying to bully the small guys. Shit these guys are probably responsible for making the idea of having the game on facebook popular

ShadowFFVI

@Satis24:
Step 1: Eliminate competition.
Step 2: Start charging for something that used to be free.
Step 3: ?
Step 4: Profit!

Gouki4u's avatar has a severe case of Jekyll and Hyde

Did those Scrabulous devs even make money off the app? All they need to issue is a cease and desist.

flashtut

@Satis24: That is a good point. But somehow i guess hasbro thinks the application will cause them to lose money.

Neo-Senku: The World's Finest Pervert

You know your company sucks at being a company when you have to sue fans of your product. Wait a minute, maybe this makes Hasbro a GREAT company!

Quicksilver4648

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't applications all free on facebook anyway? If so then what is the big deal? No one is making any profit from it.

Satis24

Actually, I was just thinking about playing Online Scrabble yesterday.

Szin

@InsidiousTuna:

Hmmm, giggle?

Wahrheit

hasbro needs to make some $$ somehow i guess

Scrapple

Oh, dear. As long as it isn't the one made by Owen's company.

InsidiousTuna

Sorry. As much as people are going to bitch and moan over this, Hasbro is in the clear here, it's pretty much their perogative to take down Scrabulous, as not doing so sets a potentially deadly precedent that anyone can make a copy of games owned by Hasbro.

JamesKilton

@karamashi: "Hasbro is suing the creators of the popular Scrabulous Facebook game, after a request the toy company made to the social network earlier this year to pull the game went unanswered."

[kotaku.com]

The suing part is new. The request to pull Scrabulous is the old part.

teh_joe

@Anaralia:

Without even giving consideration to other countries, they are taking on the Scrabulous makers in the USA, which is where Hasbro owns the IP for Scrabble. If they take them down here, it goes down everywhere else in the world! Also sounds kind of arrogant of the Scrabulous people to brush off Hasbro's communication with them. They have the right to distribute Scrable online, without generic imitators damaging their business.

PrivateJ0ker

I actually agree with hasbro on this one...

thebluick

There is no way to spin this. Hasbro really has a right to stop that application. They basically copied their original IP game Scrabble. If they allowed Scrabulous to continue it would indicate that they no longer had control of Scrabble, and anyone could release their version of Scrabble for sale. They have to protect their company, Scrabble is a very well liked game of Hasbro's. In this day and age with digital technology detracting people away from board games, you would think they would have extra incentive to protect their companies interests in the online stage.

PrivateJ0ker

@hahnchen: nobody at EA or Hasbro cares about THAT, are you high? ;)

Lajcik

Hasbro should have just bought these guys out without having to waste time, money and goodwill in creating an official EA version which is no doubt inferior.

How many people found out about Scrabble through Scrabulous? A considerable number, I'd imagine.

hahnchen

@Anaralia: Hasbro owns the US rights to the Scrabble IP, which includes the trademarked (not copyrighted) name, and the copyright to the underlying game.

You're correct in saying that only the expression, and not the underlying idea, can be copyrighted. Here, though, the underlying idea is "crossword-based tile game". The expression is in the game's mechanics, rules, characteristics, design, etc. And Scrabulous CLEARLY infringes that. The size of the board, the concepts of double/triple letter/word score spaces, the colors of those spaces, and the layout of those spaces -- even the star in the middle of the board -- are NOT inherent to the idea of "crossword-based tile game", and therefore are copyrightable. Scrabulous is, basically, a direct and unaltered copy of Scrabble.

Seriously -- this isn't even a case from the infringement standpoint. It's the very definition of "actionable infringement." The only means of defense for the Scrabulous people would be to argue that Hasbro's actions in the past have caused them to forfeit their IP rights (e.g. they've allowed multiple other commercial infringements of the Scrabble IP in the past, and have not acted to protect their interests), and that therefore Scrabble is now in the public domain, and that Hasbro therefore can't prevent the unauthorized use of the Scrabble IP.

A Pimp Named DaveR

It's moments like this that truly describe how much a company cares about its customers.

If someone makes something on a new medium/platform that you and your company should have already developed for, you (as a company) can do one of two things.

1: Buy out said product and label it as your own.
2: Make your own, deploy, then sue.

Choice 1 makes you look good to customers and ultimately will help you sell more of your product.

Choice 2 makes you look like a total asshole and will ultimately help ensure people spit whenever your name is mentioned.

(Intellectual Property rights are good and all, but there are contexts in which they are also horrible, stifling, and bad for the consumer. This is one of those contexts.)

Poor Hasbro, first they join up with EA, now this. My childhood memories are being tainted... and I hate Scrabble.

DaveKap

@phor11: "To me, it just doesn't seem like Hasbro is doing the right thing here..."
*fixed (no edit button makes me a sad panda)

phor11

Why didn't Hasbro try to work out a licensing deal with Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla?

It seems to me that that would have been more beneficial to both parties than licensing the property to EA and trying to muscle out Scrabulous... Especially with all the positive attention that Scrabulous brought back to the property.

To me, it just just seem like Hasbro is doing the right thing here... (even though they may have the right to do what they're doing)

phor11

How is Scrabulous, the game (not the website, not the interface, not the other extras), different from Scrabble?

If the answer is "it's not" then Hasbro (and Mattel, for that matter, in the regions in which they have jurisdiction) have every right to sue. Scrabble is not a public domain game design.

Scrabulous may have innovated some in the community support, and that is to be commended. But they maybe should've tried more innovation in the game itself. At least try to make it different (assuming it isn't, which it doesn't appear to be).

BigWeather

The 'real' scrabble game is very very buggy and defective. I can't seem to get it to work yet. I might go try the knock off version in a little bit.

pixelfish

lol, one of the words on the scrabulous board image for this post is "TIT"

3inst3in

@JamesKilton:

EXACTLY! As I was just saying, though, it would apply for the most part to Scrabble, but could also preclude the loss of some of their other board game IPs, to generic new companies.

PrivateJ0ker

@Satis24:

Free-to-play != no profit

jeangrae

I don't know, I guess they are in their right to sue over this but it seems awful petty. A better solution would probably have been to work with the creators of Scrabulous to make it official instead of probably paying EA to make an official one.

wcraigw

For me the issue is going to be around the 'expression' idea. You can't copyright an idea, including the rules for a game (witness Momopoly, Lutheranopoly, Pederastopoly, etc.)

Where I think the Scrabulous folks went wrong was the coloration of tiles, look and feel, and possibly even the name they used, which then gets darn close to the part you can copyright, which is the expression of that idea. I think if they'd had a black board with the letters on round disks - or even squares that weren't tan, then Hasbro would have no case...but I personally would think that a reasonable person would see that they are no simply using the rules for the game (unprotected), but the way that those rules were expressed/communicated.

phloog

@A Pimp Named DaveR:

But, they would have no basis for proving that Scrabble has existed in the public domain in North America.

PrivateJ0ker

@DaveKap: With due respect, you're totally wrong.

Without IP rights, there would be no IP, because nobody would have an incentive to produce it. We wouldn't have books, because the only way you'd be guaranteed that your story, or research, or whatever would give you a return on the time and effort you put into it would be to transmit the information orally to each person for a fee -- and even then, if the other person had a good memory, they could just sell your information themselves in the same way. Ditto music, art, inventions, improvements to existing devices, etc etc etc.

If someone takes IP that you own and uses it for their own purposes, it is theft. In the first "option" you present, the IP holder is giving in to extortion -- "I took what's yours, now pay me or I'll ruin your business". In the second, they're defending their property. And they ARE being good to their customers -- the ones who purchased the product from them, the legal owner of the IP, BECAUSE they were the legal owners. Their customers aren't the people who are benefitting from the illegal use of their property. It's like saying that going after shoplifters is being an asshole to your customers.

Hasbro is not the government, and Scrabble is not air. Nobody in the universe has an inherent right to play Scrabble for free.

A Pimp Named DaveR

When I was first introduced to Scrabulous I thought it was strange they had nothing to do with the official brand. Hasbro aren't missing out on any money from me anyway. I only play Scrabulous because it coincides with logging into Facebook, I would never actively seek out a game of Scrabble.

Synthemesc

@pixelfish:

I'm experiencing the same thing. The EA Hasbro Scrabble just sits at the front screen with a letter "L" block that says 30% in the bottom corner. I'm assuming it's trying to spell "Loading" but it's unable to load it. While I'm waiting for it to load I've started 3 ScrabFabulous games.

goody71

So the two guys are making 25k a month simply by making a blatant rip-off? Screw those guys!

I'm sticking with the tabletop version of Scrabble.

Koldenblue

A Pimp Named DaveR and PrivateJoker have it right here. Hasbro has a duty to vigorously defend their copyrighted IPs, even if there is no money made from the infringement. If they don't, then they allow anyone who wants to to infringe, even if they DO make some money on the infringement.

Qui-GonJim

@Gray665: Boo-urns indeed, Smithers.

HfAsianInvasion

Man, scrabulous is the only facebook game I play. Boo-urns.

Gray665

The scrabulous creators make a significant amount of money through ads. It's not corporation money, but it's a lot. About $25k a month...

[www.nytimes.com]

Even with a real Scrabble app available now, a lot of folks are going to keeping playing the Srcabulous version out of sheer laziness/inertia. And as pointed out above, it's not like they invented the game.

hcd

I had always heard that Scrabble was only copy written based on its own rules of the game.
There are countless other "scrabble knockoffs" out there that Hasbro can't sue because they placed their '2x word', '3x letter', etc. squares in different spots than the original Scrabble game (therefore, no longer breaking copyright rules). Do 'Scrabulous' and 'Scrabble' have their multiplier boxes in the same spot? Then I'd agree Hasbro has a case.

jjlax328

@phloog: Monopoly is a special and unique case. Monopoly is like Othello -- the underlying game had already been created and was in the public domain when Darrow and Parker Bros. copyrighted the expression. So in the Monopoly case, it really is ONLY the specific expression -- which boils down to the Atlantic City street names and the specific railroads -- that is protected. So you can legally do an exact copy with London names (although you'll probably get a letter from Parker Brothers, because they basically have to do it to protect THEIR rights), because you're not infringing on the protected property. You can't just copy Monopoly and have the same street names -- that's infringement.

Scrabble, on the other hand, was NOT a public domain game (to my knowledge) before it was invented and copyrighted. Therefore, the specific mechanism of the game IS copyrightable and protectable.

A Pimp Named DaveR

@Satis24: actually, they do make money off of scrabulous. the app loads ads into the page while you play, so they're making ad revenue. if they're weren't profiting at all from it and there was no official version, i'd be upset they tried to remove it.

of course, for the mindless defenders of IP, there are cases where certain items go into the public domain after a certain amount of time because keeping them private hinders progress. the time given allows the inventor to profit from the idea to recover the cost of producing a product (and if they don't produce a product, they don't deserve the IP. thinking of something and then trying to make other people pay you later when they do the hard work of turning it into something useful is just plain wrong). moving it into the public domain later allows others to build off it later so we don't stagnant. the design of this system is good, even if the implementation isn't always done well.

Accelerata

@A Pimp Named DaveR: I see, makes sense, thanks for the knowledge.

Neo-Senku: The World's Finest Pervert

I sort of assumed a lawsuit hit the last time I heard about this issue coming up. Not surprising, considering how blatant it is. Maybe they could have gotten away without that name.

Hmmm.... maybe I should make a puzzle game for Wii where you drag to line up sets of 3 jewels to clear them, then new ones fall from the top. I'll call it... "Wiijeweled"

fuchikoma

While Hasbro is futzing around with this lawsuit, they could be releasing Scrabble on XBLA, WiiWare, and the PS3 and making a killing since they would be the only game in town on those platforms. I could easily see Scrabble becoming a hit on XBLA, in the same way Uno did.

Facebook is a nice market and all, but don't overlook the low-hanging fruit, people.

Tybee

@Accelerata: On your second paragraph: not really. Things go into the public domain because it's wrong to give someone a perpetual monopoly over an idea, and therefore legal protection has to have its limits. Things can go into the public domain simply because the inventor/creator doesn't properly protect their interest -- which has nothing to do with progress or anything, it's just a stupid mistake.

It's the IP system itself that advances progress, by allowing creators/inventors to freely disclose their inventions/discoveries/processes without sacrificing the ability to profit from them. Others can then build on the disclosed information, possibly creating new and unique (and therefore protectable) interests themselves.

Property rights aren't "mindless", they're THE essential element of any economy.

A Pimp Named DaveR

That's understandable, it is a clone after all.

Wolfers

@A Pimp Named DaveR: You cannot compare infringing on IP to stealing a car. When you steal a car you TAKE AWAY the owner's ability to drive. When you infringe on IP then you're not taking away anything from them.

I do believe IPs deserve some protection though. If someone is going to make profit off of someone else's IP then that is wrong. However if you do it for personal use or non-profit there should be no problem with it (are you against fan art? just saying).

Of course IP holders would have you believe that it's wrong to infringe in anyway, and they lobby for laws that reflect this.

As for this case though, it appears to me, they make money off of advertisements, which having them basically piggyback on the success of scrabble. In which case they should remove the app as they were not paying any licensing fees.

TheHun

hahnchen said, "How many people found out about Scrabble th...

Don't answer that... it's a trap!

rainofwalrus

@3inst3in: It's...a bird.

rapsodist

I'm stunned there are people defending this dick. Rather than making his own game, he flat-out copied someone else's fully-owned work. He even stole the name of the game! I see no reason to encourage this sort of sloppiness, and I hope he gets sued off the face of the Earth.

mwoody

@TheHun: Again, all due respect... but yes I can, and so can others -- who have been for literally centuries. IP law isn't some sort of new-fangled internet thing. It's old, well-developed, and accepted in every single country on earth. (Just not to the same degree.) Your statement is sort of like saying "you can't equate running over someone in a car with murder, because you didn't kill the person, the car did."

Infringing on IP is EXACTLY the same thing as taking away a car. It's taking unauthorized possession and use of something that is owned, legally, by someone else. Just because it's intangible property doesn't mean it's not property. What you're taking is the UNILATERAL right to (in the lingo) "exploit" the property. What if I steal your car, but you have a spare key to it? Can I argue that I haven't stolen your car, because you can still USE it, it's just extremely inconvenient for you to do so because you don't know where it is? Of course not. The reason IP protections are more complex (and, to be frank, more difficult for perfectly intelligent non-lawyers and people who don't work in IP-intensive fields to intuitively understand because of that complexity) is BECAUSE the things in question aren't tangible, "real" things -- they're ideas, trade names, the good reputation of a business, and other things that have real, demonstrable, and calculable value but which don't physically exist in any form.

A Pimp Named DaveR

Maybe the better way for Hasbro to approach this would have been to simply buy out the original app and coopt it. But ya know, this is such a blatant ripoff that they have every right to protect their IP and sue the crap out of them, especially considering how much money the infringers make on ads.

This really isn't a company going overaggressive and suing over fanart or something completely innocuous. They blatantly ripped off Hasbro's game. It sucks that they're going to pretty much destroy a popular facebook app that isn't annoying, but there really isn't a clean way out of this mess outside of settlement (Honestly, I'd be surprised if this wound up fully going to trial without Hasbro going into settlement and basically paying them some $$ to just take over the app and its userbase).

Nik in NOLA

@A Pimp Named DaveR: I was just picking on your car analogy because it reminds me of the whole "downloading is stealing" thing which in a way infringes on copyright laws. Which is absolutely ridiculous.

I still have a problem with your car analogy though, I would like to improve on it: It's like having a unique car, then someone clones it and you both can use it simultaneously. Now I guess one would be upset not to have a unique car anymore, but it is not as if it was actually stolen or he has been inconvenienced in any way.

I know IP laws aren't new, which is why they should be refreshed for the internet age. Unfortunately the new laws are being more restrictive due to lobbying of the invoved industries.

TheHun

@Neo-Senku: The World's Finest Pervert: They probably don't think it'll make them lose money, but instead think they can somehow make money off suing them.

Grodesh

There is a fair amount of money to be made on facebook with Google style advertising in your apps... depending on how many people use the app you could make a lot of money.

That's why all of those lame quizzes force you to spam all your friends to find out the result.

Vergobret

Oh well, I guess Scrabulous was fun while it lasted.

Edify

It's funny.

I'm a board game publisher ( [www.gifttrap.com] ) and I know lots of independent board game publishers who, like me, would jump at the chance of getting 500k users per day playing and talking about your game even if you didn't own the site that's collecting $25 in ad revenue.

Hasbro and Mattel have both benefited from sales increases due to the born again popularity of their cash-cow game. They sell over a million copies a year when really nobody really needs another copy.

Scrabble is a board game that's not turn based. Scrabulous is an online game. There are as many differences as there are similarities. Scrabulous defined the bar for an online word game.

Scrabulous have made the game work online and generated a dedicated crowd.

Now, as a follower, Hasbro with all the fuss has only managed 10k users per day.

Isn't Scrabulous just a better Mouse Trap - they didn't copy an online version as Scrabble didn't have one. There are other copies too and I bet they aren't being sued, simply because they haven't created the attention or the dedicated crowd.

There are many other "copycat" game apps on Facebook and they aren't getting sued.

I have total respect for the Scrabulous guys. We created a Facebook app in the vein of Free Gifts to help promote our game but getting your social app moving is no mean feat. Translating a board game to an online game is far from obvious.

The Free Gifts apps get 100k daily active users on Facebook, which is pretty cool. Our game precedes Free Gifts, but you can't fight the viral nature and you've got to be first on the right platform.

Check out our app here; [apps.new.facebook.com]

Unlike the Free Gifts app your friend gets to choose their own gift, the question is will you match. We have turned virtual gifts into a game.

The GiftTRAP board game is on sale in Barnes and Noble right now which is pretty cool (no doubt next to Scrabble). I'm just a few million copies behind them but gaining fast, but then we do have some pretty cool awards to our name.

I hope Facebook doesn't drop Scrabulous. My sense is they will, but it's hard to call.

NickKellet

@Satis24: ad revenue.. facebook is. Facebook should be the one being sued.. not the creators.. but then they could hide behind the "we're just a portal for others content" thing.

Our patent & copywrite system needs an overhaul. These days, instead of striving for improvement we just sue each other into the ground.

Imagine if Hasboro and EA isntead put all this energy and money into giving people a reason to play their version OVER the copetitions. Thats the way it SHOULD work in my own perfect world.

asphix20

@Nik in NOLA: Hasbro should NOT have "bought" Scrabulous.
Why would they need to buy something that's clearly infringing on their intellectual property?

But other posters are correct. Hasbro had a lot to gain from Scrabulous' popularity. They should have offered a licensing deal where the authors PAID Hasbro in order to use the IP.

It would have been a win/win.

Now if the authors had turned down Hasbro's licensing offer, it's completely fair in my mind for Hasbro to let someone else (EA) license and sue the Scrabulous authors.

But I don't think it's really right for them to have jumped directly to that.
That move screams "big business", and because of that they're not going to have public opinion on their side. Which will inevitably hurt them as a company in the long run.

phor11

I always thought that Scrabulous was pretty fun. I'd never played scrabble before that, and was thinking it'd be kinda fun to play it IRL with some friends. Screw that, now.

Overly litigious companies just piss me off, so essentially they've just ensured that not only will I never pick up a physical version, I sure as hell won't be playing Hasbro's "legit" version either.

Hasbro just seems to be upset that their product can't compete, so instead of improving their own version and trying to win over the public by offering more features or a better interface, they just want to remove the competition and take their place.

wiregr

would people be ok if someone ripped the sprites from super mario brothers and made an commerical app for facebook? how is scrabble any different? they stole the rules and the entire board.

minus_273

[www.facebook.com]

Apparently facebook users (myself included) are being encouraged to email executives at Hasbro and encourage them not to sue

madhoman