No dog in this fight
Jan. 22nd, 2008 10:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
womzillaI am not a Facebook user; I am not a player of Scrabble or Scrabulous; and generally I'm not very excitable about trademark violations.
However, I have to point to this this comment from the BBC's article on the Scrabulous affair. (Background: Hasbro and Mattel, who split the worldwide ownership of Scrabble between them, are requesting that Facebook take down Scrabulous, which is a precise clone of the board game and physically resembles it to a degree that it's a clear trademark violation. There's a good screenshot of Scrabulous in this ABC article. Games--the rules of games--aren't covered by copyright, but their components can be, and they certainly can be protected by trademark. On the face of it, Hasbro and Mattel--which can agree on nothing else--are almost certainly well within their rights to do this.)
The comment was this:
Well, yes, except for the fact that neither Hasbro nor Mattel controls the online rights to Scrabble. The world's largest computer game manufacturer, Electronic Arts, does, at least for the next few years--they apparently picked them up from Infogrames/Atari after Hasbro renegotiated the sale of Hasbro Interactive to Infogrames in 2001.
Yes, this is a tangled thicket of rights and reassignments. But you'd think that a) someone who is deeply interested in the online version of Scrabble might want to do a smidgen of research before telling reasonably successful multinational corporations how to run their businesses, and b) that the BBC reporter covering the matter might take the time to find out if the person interviewed has even the slightest sense of what he's talking about before quoting him.
However, I have to point to this this comment from the BBC's article on the Scrabulous affair. (Background: Hasbro and Mattel, who split the worldwide ownership of Scrabble between them, are requesting that Facebook take down Scrabulous, which is a precise clone of the board game and physically resembles it to a degree that it's a clear trademark violation. There's a good screenshot of Scrabulous in this ABC article. Games--the rules of games--aren't covered by copyright, but their components can be, and they certainly can be protected by trademark. On the face of it, Hasbro and Mattel--which can agree on nothing else--are almost certainly well within their rights to do this.)
The comment was this:
Interviewed on BBC Radio 5 Live Karl Savage, a member of the Save Scrabulous group, said: "A lot of people are saying shame on Hasbro, shame on Mattel, if you wouldn't be so short-sighted about this then you have an opportunity to actually make some money from this rather than alienate your existing customers. . . ."
Well, yes, except for the fact that neither Hasbro nor Mattel controls the online rights to Scrabble. The world's largest computer game manufacturer, Electronic Arts, does, at least for the next few years--they apparently picked them up from Infogrames/Atari after Hasbro renegotiated the sale of Hasbro Interactive to Infogrames in 2001.
Yes, this is a tangled thicket of rights and reassignments. But you'd think that a) someone who is deeply interested in the online version of Scrabble might want to do a smidgen of research before telling reasonably successful multinational corporations how to run their businesses, and b) that the BBC reporter covering the matter might take the time to find out if the person interviewed has even the slightest sense of what he's talking about before quoting him.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-01-23 06:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-23 03:33 pm (UTC)