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Comment by nickb | Hacker News Reader

It is a bit of a surprise that Scrabulous, an obvious copy of the board game Scrabble, managed to avoid shutdown as long as it did.

So what if it's a copy? You cannot copyright a game: http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html What Scrabulous should have done is to modify their name so it's not even similar to Scrabble (and doesn't share a syllable and a half) and they should have fought this in a court. They've made enough money to hire an excellent lawyer in the US. Had Hasbro had a really good case, they would have filed charges in court. They opted for a generic DMCA...

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While it's true that you can't copyright a game, you can copyright parts of a game. For example, the game's artwork or the official Scrabble dictionary. I haven't actually played Scrabulous, but if they used the exact same board layout, that might be copyright infringement. Or, if they used the official word list, that might be copyright infringement.

You can also copyright the text describing the rules of the game. But, I doubt they'd be so lazy as to copy that...

And, of course, you can trademark the name of a game. As you said, Scrabulous is probably too similar to Scrabble.

I think it's possible to legally make a Scrabble knock off (not a lawyer, though!)... but, if Scrabulous had used a non-derivative board, word list, and a completely different name would they have gotten so popular?

You can't copyright a database of publicly available information (e.g. a dictionary, a phone book etc.): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Tel...

Some dictionaries have been inserting a fake word into their lists so that they can copyright that specific word and go after the infringer for using that word in their dictionaries. They can also copyright the definition of words. But you can't copyright Scrabble's list of acceptable words.

See also: "Fictitious entries" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry)

"Ghost words" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_word)

You can't copyright the rules to the game. Any distinctive design elements can be copyrighted. But if those elements are dictated by the rules then they still cannot be copyrighted.

Honestly I doubt that Hasbro could successfully pursue a copyright infringement case over Scrabulous. Scrabble has a very generic design which is mostly directly implemented from the rules. Hasbro's best bet would likely be a trademark claim. Though, if a court determined that "Scrabble" has become a generic term for an acrostic game then they could actually lose the trademark. That's a serious danger, just from my own personal perception.

The DMCA is a lousy way for Hasbro to try to eliminate Scrabulous. If I were Scrabulous I would send a counter-notice, at which point under the DMCA Facebook would be required to reinstate the game. Then take it to court. Hasbro will have a hell of a time making this one stick.

Edit:

The safe harbor and counter-notice provisions of the DMCA are the only thing I like about it.

Hasbro is the current Evil Empire of the toy industry. I would not mind seeing them taken down a peg. Long live the underdog!

Scrabulous would have a case, if they did not make such a direct rip-off of Scrabble (e.g. see all of the not-quite-direct-rip-offs floating around casual gaming sites or for mobile devices.) The coloring of the board, the design of the tiles, etc; all of this is covered by copyright and Scrabulous made the bad decision to ignore this fact and simply copy everything. Scrabulous can fight this, but they will lose.

Yeah. If I were cloning this, I would put the numbers in the upper-left-hand corner, and change the colors on the board. Perhaps I would change the point value for some letters also, and maybe move the "triple word score" squares around.

Actually... now that the competition is shut down, I wonder if I should implement this. Can I have some funding, kthx? ;)

Suing over the "copyright" for games is nothing new for Hasbro:

http://boardgames.about.com/library/news/bl000208a.htm http://www.insidemacgames.com/news/story.php?ArticleID=867

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