What about the trademark issues though? I forget what the extent of trademark allows but I was under the impression it is protected for as long as the product is on the market. And as much as I love Scrabulous I can't help but notice that the colors, layout, etc of the board are a nearly exact match.
O On Fri, 1 Aug 2008, Nelson Pavlosky wrote: > Elizabeth Stark wrote: >> >> And Nelson, just to play devil's advocate here, isn't this just a clear > case >> of infringement of the Hasbro's copyright (and the Scrabble trademark for >> that matter)? Should Hasbro not hold the copyright to scrabble? What is the >> scenario we'd like to see? Should board games not be copyrightable matter? >> Should naming a game with such a similar name not be trademark > infringement? > > Well, ideally copyright would be shorter so that a game created in 1938 > would be public domain by now. > > Failing that, I think we should put pressure on companies not to enforce > their copyrights to the hilt. Just because you have the legal power to > do something doesn't make it the right thing to do, either for your > business or for the public good. Working with "pirates" in a civil > manner instead of trying to sue them out of existence might have given > us a healthy online music business back when Napster was created instead > of like a decade later with iTunes, Amazon etc. A legitimized Napster > I think would have been a seriously good thing. Similarly, working with > Scrabulous might have been more productive than suing them. As the > Economist article I linked to suggests, perhaps companies should > consider more seriously whether the "piracy" is actually a bad thing > before sending in the lawyers. > > We have carrots and sticks, folks. We can boycott companies that don't > play nicely with others, and we can do things like CarrotMob > <http://www.carrotmob.org/> to benefit businesses that are friendly to > their fans and customers instead of suing them. Let's encourage people > and companies to share more and to hoard less, because generally in the > information economy, it's not a zero sum game, when you share frequently > everybody wins. > > Peace, > ~Nelson~ > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss > _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
