Traditional Media Uses Bullying Legal Tactics: Scrabble vs. Scrabulous and Hulu vs. Redlasso

Traditional Media Uses Bullying Legal Tactics: Scrabble vs. Scrabulous and Hulu vs. Redlasso
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In 2005 Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla created Scrabulous; by 2007 it went nuclear as a Facebook app. The social networking aspect of Facebook brought it a half-million daily players, giving users the ability to joust with friends and family across the world. While it is undeniable that Scrabulous has the "look and feel" of Hasbro Corp's Scrabble, let's look at that game through the lens of copyright law. What was first conceived in 1938 by an architect became ubiquitous: One in three U.S. homes has a Scrabble set. Apart from the fact that copyright does not protect board games, but expressions of ideas, and that Scrabble does have a copyright on the crossword puzzle writ large, its public tussle with the Agarwalla boys is the ongoing narrative of behind-the-curve traditional media that thinks that it can buy or bully its way back into fashion.

Scrabble is Tearing Families Apart

After cease-and-desisting Scrabulous last winter, Hasbro filed a copyright infringement complaint this July 24th. When on July 29th Facebook took the game down for U.S. and Canadian users, it was a day of mourning. If it's true, as The New York Times reports, that Hasbro offered Scrabulous $10M, then it's not a cut and dry case - but the blowback still tells a tale. Whatever loyalty generations past have had for Scrabble has been trampled as they attempted to assert their legal standing in the online space over a game - that while it might be a ringer for Scrabble, functioned not in difference, but in kind. The fact that Hasbro owns U.S. and Canadian rights to Scrabble, while Mattel has the rest of the world is also pertinent: Two game companies (Electronic Arts and RealNetworks' Gameshow, respectively) now exist as "official" versions of Scrabble in Facebook - and, as a side-effect, players can no longer cross borders to play with one another.

Newly christened Wordscraper, debuting less than two days later, may or may not be on the safe side of infringement, has a game-changer in that the board is itself customizable. This has led to observers suggesting that this has ushered in an era of collaborative design, with fans on Facebook cheering on its first efforts and creating board design workshops even as they practice "malicious interference" with the officially sanctioned online Scrabble. This poster on Mashable implicitly argues for additional factors beyond copyright: "Since Hasbro responded late to adapting to social media, they deserve to face intense competition."

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