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Scrabulous highlights the failure of American Copyright Law

Started by Duncan Riley · 11 months ago

Facebook game Scrabulous is no longer available to users in North America as the Hasbro case develops. Hasbro is claiming that Scabulous is a trademark and copyright infringement on Scrabble.

It’s easy to side with the underdog in the case. Two guys from India did what Hasb ... Continue reading »

7 comments

  • gregorylent

    11 months ago

    not only copyright law is corrupted, the whole notion of intellectual property rights has turned into a protection racket. they will break upon the rocks of reality one of these days, but not before a million lawyers buy some nice houses.
    reply
  • Feneuk

    11 months ago

    I am lost here. Copyright over what? The word scrabble, as any word, is not subject to copyright. Ideas (the idea of the game) are not subject either. At best, it is a case of trademark infringement...
    http://electromate.blogspot.com/2008/07/crappy-...
    reply
  • agentbleu

    11 months ago

    what a fantastic post Duncan, one of your best yet..
    reply
  • Wap Advertising

    8 months ago

    If I'm not wrong anything before 1923 is not copyrighted and belong to Public Domain. You can make a lot of money selling public domain stuffs without having to create them.
    reply
  • Racing School

    7 months ago

    I don't see how Scrabulous and Scrabble can be related. It's a bit off. If they win the case, McDonalds will start suing everybody using the word Mc such as McAfee, Mcdonnel.
    reply
  • Observer

    6 months ago

    What about the heirs of the copyright holder? Are they involved in corporate greed if they are to receive a benefit for the creative creations of their estate?

    You don't seem to understand why patents have a more limited protection life than copyrights. It boils down to the encouragement of fresh creative works. If copyrights protections were short-lived, human laziness would ensure that most people resort to benefiting off the backs of others, with no valuable contribution, rather than put the effort to create original works. In contrast, innovation would be stifled if patents were protected excessively before entering the public domain - because there is much more inherent value for society to allow for derivative works of innovation than the expansion of fair use of copyrights.
    reply
  • dalebaker33

    5 months ago

    It is simply stated as, it is. Copyright infringement, They had to know what they were doing when they chose that name. If they had any plan on making any money from this venture they should have had the foresight to see this out come. I deal with copyrights every day with my illustration work and I cant stress enough on the importance of copyrighted material.

    mark smith
    Narconon VistaBay
    reply

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