From Scrabulous to Wordscraper: Does the new game pass legal muster?

Oops. An earlier version of this post incorrectly associated the John Marshall Law School in Chicago with the University of Chicago. The two are not affiliated.

Scrabulous got them in trouble, but will Wordscraper fly?

After Hasbro filed a copyright and trademark infringement lawsuit against the developers of Scrabulous, the Indian brothers who came up with the popular Facebook application introduced a new word game -- Wordscraper.

Unlike Scrabble, to which Hasbro owns the copyrights and trademarks, Wordscraper has round tiles instead of square ones. Its tiles don't display the points associated with each letter as in Scrabble. And the point system is arranged differently on the board, which also introduces a quadruple word score that's not available in authorized Scrabble. Wordscraper, however, does let players customize the board, allowing anyone to rearrange the configuration to exactly match Scrabble.

Hasbro hasn't given any indication that it will drop its current lawsuit for past damages from Scrabulous.The question is whether the toy maker will pursue legal action over Wordscraper. Are the changes to the new game enough to scrape past the legal restrictions set out by Hasbro's copyrights on Scrabble? Maybe not.

"I’m not convinced that it is different enough," said Henry M. Sneath, an intellectual property attorney and a board member of DRI -- The Voice of the Defense Bar, an organization of 22,000 defense lawyers. "Copyright infringement in particular does a very detailed factual analysis of whether or not content is substantially similar to the original. That’s the test: substantial similarity."

One question judges will be looking at is whether the developers of Wordscraper, brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, relied on Scrabble ...

Kids invent the darndest things, and the U.S. patent office wants to see them

You'd think that the last thing needed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which as of last fall had a two-year backlog of pending applications, would be more people submitting their ideas. But it is actively trying to become the mother of invention to keep America competitive as China, India and other countries rapidly churn out more scientists and engineers.

In new ads launched today, the patent office, along with the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation and the Ad Council, encourage children to invent stuff. The public service ads, which build off a campaign started last year and will appear on TV, radio, the Web and billboards, are aimed at kids between the ages of 8 and 11. The TV version features a boy showing off a very typical boy idea: bicycle tires with suction cups. Hint: it's not a real invention, as you could probably guess when you see the kid riding on the ceiling in the video above.

The idea is to use humor to inspire the next young Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. The ads tell kids, "Anything's possible. Keep thinking," and direct them to Invent Now, a social networking site sponsored by the same groups. Children can upload designs of their inventions, comment on other kids' ideas and play games. The site even walks them through the steps needed to get a real patent. It's like a mini-lesson in intellectual property law (which could come in handy if they're Scrabulous fans.)

Since its launch in April 2007, 72,000 people have registered on the site and 1,200 children have posted inventions. Their ideas include plans for bionic wings (helpful if the suction-cup tires fail), microwave pants and a bug robot, which "swats little bugs, eats little bugs, sucks up pollution, sucks up natural disasters and turns them into food" -- all on two triple-A batteries. That's not bad for the inventor's suggested retail price of $500.

-- Jim Puzzanghera

Puzzanghera, a Times staff writer, covers tech and media policy from Washington, D.C.

Video courtesy of U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

Watch the X Games on your phone! Available on six handsets nationwide

If you're really hip, you can use your phone to watch athletes ride a half pipe and do lip tricks in real time at the 2008 Summer X Games, which begin today. If you're really, really hip, you may even be able to watch yourself on your phone while you ride a half-pipe.

But you probably won't be. The live dedicated X-Games channel, which is brought to phones by MediaFLO USA, a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm, only works on six handsets on two carriers: AT&T and Verizon. Plus, to see the games live on your phone, you have to sign up for a mobile video data plan from one of those carriers. Oh, and it doesn't work in San Francisco or Boston, where the network isn't set up yet.

The X-Games channel is one of the many cool mobile video services that have rolled out during the last year, including live video of the U.S. Open playoffs between Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate. But the number of people who can actually watch the videos on their phones is very low. Yankee Group analyst Linda Barrabee said that at the end of last year, only 4% of consumers were regularly watching video or TV on their phones. Even fewer people watch live TV on their phones, since that number includes people watching on-demand video.

New technologies rarely win over the masses rapidly (unless you're Apple). But will mobile video ever become a must-have device on a phone? Will anyone actually want to watch a toothpick-sized Kobe Bryant dunk a pea-sized basketball?

"If you think about the readiness of consumers overall to consumer video and TV on their cellphones, it's still a very small market," Barrabee said. Customers have to pay an extra $15 and up a month to watch live video, and the phones cost upwards of $200, she said. A phone optimized for watching video "isn't always what consumers want when they're buying handsets."

Adoption rates have been growing ...

Around the Web 7.31.08: E-mail is overloading, blog comments are overwhelming, complete privacy is overrated

-- Suffering from e-mail overload? You're not alone. E-mail has "taken over the workplace like a midsummer algae bloom." Some people are stressed to the breaking point, and entrepreneurs are stepping in to try to help. LAT

-- Tired of e-mailing? Why not just leave a blog comment? Don't worry about grammar, courtesy or accuracy. Many people don't (Of course we're not talking about our intelligent audience here at the Tech blog). LAT

-- Google: "Complete privacy does not exist." The company says that in court documents, responding to a lawsuit brought by a Pennsylvania family unhappy that their home was included in Street View photos. Smoking Gun

-- China has backed off its pledge that journalists will have access to the open Internet at the Olympics.  Washington Post

-- David Sarno takes a trip to San Francisco to visit with Revision3, the Internet TV start-up founded by the guys behind Digg. Web Scout

-- Google may be working on creating a venture capital arm. Lots of other high-tech companies already have them. WSJ

-- Another Netflix deal: This fall, LG is releasing a Blu-ray player that also streams Netflix movies to your TV. VentureBeat

-- Fewer analysts for us to quote? Forrester Research is buying Jupiter Research for $23 million. PaidContent

-- Yahoo's shareholder meeting on Friday might get ugly. But Carl Icahn says he'll stay away. CNet

-- Microsoft is suing a Taiwanese company it says is violating its patents relating to computer mice. CNet

-- Apple says the MobileMe service is finally fixed, three weeks after its launch. PC Magazine

-- Broadband growth is slowing, according to those who read the Comcast earnings tea leaves. GigaOm

-- Chris Gaither

Illustration: Christopher Serra / For The Times

Scrabulous reincarnated on Facebook as Wordscraper

Note: This post has been updated to include more detailed comment from Hasbro, an interview with a Wordscraper player and legal analysis from an intellectual property attorney.

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Scrabulous is back on Facebook, but with a new name and a different look.

The Scrabble knockoff that was pulled from Facebook on Tuesday by its creators over a copyright and trademark dispute was brought back to life late Wednesday. It's now called Wordscraper.

The game play is very similar to Scrabulous, aside from a few tweaks, such as round letter tiles instead of square, a new point system and a few different ways of playing.

So, will this satisfy Hasbro, which owns the North American rights to Scrabble and sued the India-based creators of Scrabulous last week? The company won't say, but instead issued this statement:

Hasbro has an obligation to protect its intellectual property and will act appropriately when necessary. We recently filed a lawsuit against the developers of the infringing Scrabulous application, and we are pleased that the unlawful application has been removed from Facebook. We evaluate every situation on a case-by-case basis and have no comment regarding the Scrabulous developers’ new application at this time.

Here's what a copyright and Internet lawyer told us Wednesday before Wordscraper appeared:

Q: What if the creators of Scrabulous were to change the name to “XYZ Game” and tweak the board and point system for their application. Would that make it legally permissible?
A: People are always free to create their own original games. But if they copy the creative expression of a third party, or they try to mimic the logos or trademarks for a famous brand, they will typically be enjoined. Intellectual property law protects against copying and unfair competition. But people are always allowed to engage in fair competition, which would require them to create their own original game. The law requires a minimal level of “original and creative expression” to be entitled to copyright protection. 

Meanwhile, the official version of Scrabble for Facebook, which Electronic Arts created for Hasbro, is back online after what EA called a malicious attack that took the game down.

So what do Scrabulous fans think? Stanley Kim, a 34-year-old in Palo Alto, started a game at 7 a.m. today. So far, he liked the ability to customize the game's layout and scoring system. "You can even replicate the layout of Scrabulous," Kim said. "It's got some nice features. But graphically, it takes getting used to."

Kim said he was "surprisingly saddened" when he learned that Scrabulous had been taken down this week. "I thought it was just a little time-filler. But I really missed the trash-talking with friends. There are some friends I don't get to see that much, but I played Scrabulous with them."

Kim turned to Hasbro's authorized Scrabble game. But none of his friends wanted to play with him.  "All of my friends are really upset with Hasbro and Electronic Arts, and they didn't want to have anything to do with the game," Kim said. "And when I tried to fiddle with it, it crashed on me. So I gave up."

Ironically, Scrabulous rekindled a long-forgotten interest in Hasbro's board game for Kim. "I hadn't played Scrabble for like 20 years," he said. "After I started playing Scrabulous, I bought the board game. Now I actually play Scrabble."   

-- Alex Pham

Image: Wordscraper

Fake Steve Jobs stands down, real Dan Lyons stands up for comedy

He's no longer crank-calling old Agent Sculley, penning odes to the iPod or giving shout-outs to the Yelptards.

The tech world's most infamous multiple personality has developed a new one. Fake Steve Jobs has officially morphed into the Real Dan Lyons after ditching his old gig at Forbes for his new one at Newsweek.

Who woulda thunk that the real Dan Lyons would be as funny as the Fake Steve Jobs?

On Steve Wozniak and the contention that he never had sexual relations with Kathy Griffin: "Incredible. My iPhone just rang and I picked up and it's Woz. He goes, 'This is Steve Wozniak. You think I am a fat, lazy billionaire who cuts the line at Apple stores and hasn't done anything serious with my life since 1982, and I think you're a (bleep) stain on the underpants of journalism. So can we talk?'"

On Google not getting killed by Cuil, a new search engine launched to negative reviews by some former Googlers: "Just picked up my office phone and it's Sergey Brin, who says: 'This is Sergey Brin. You think I'm a spoiled hypocritical billionaire who talks smack about energy conservation while commuting to strip bars in a jumbo jet, and I think you're an argument for making abortion retroactive. Am I catching you at a bad time?'"

On the on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again rumors reported by TechCrunch that Digg is being bought by Google: "My Skype just buzzed, with a call from a name I didn't recognize, and I picked up and it was Kevin Rose of Digg. He goes, 'This is Kevin Rose. You think I'm a self-absorbed Lothario who is secretly only 17 years old and who once bragged to BusinessWeek about being worth $60 million even though I didn't have a dime, and I think you're a parasitic lowlife who should be mopping booth floors with your tongue at the Lusty Lady in North Beach. Could I bend your ear for a moment?'"

The latest post is plucked from TMZ.com and captures John Mayer giving tech support to his dad by cellphone ("Don't give up! Don't give up!").

Fair warning: The real Dan Lyons is no less profane than Fake Steve Jobs.

Namaste.

-- Jessica Guynn

Photo: The real Steve Jobs. Credit: Robert Durell / Los Angeles Times

Scrabble vs. Scrabulous: A lesson in copyright law

Tuesday's demise of the Scrabulous application on Facebook led some of our readers to question the legal claim Hasbro has on Scrabble, the official game. The toy company last week filed a copyright and trademark infringement lawsuit against the developers of Scrabulous, an online word game that played very much like Scrabble.

Invented in 1938 by a New York architect named Alfred Mosher Butts, Scrabble counts millions of players worldwide. Hasbro estimates that more than 100 million copies of the board game have been sold in 29 languages and 100 countries. Hasbro, through its subsidiary Milton Bradley, bought the North American rights to the game in 1987.

To answer our readers' questions on Hasbro's copyright and trademark case, we turned to Ian Ballon, an intellectual property and Internet attorney with Greenberg Traurig. What follows is an abridged interview with Ballon, who also wrote the four-volume treatise, "E-Commerce & Internet Law."

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Q: Many people think that because Scrabble is 70 years old, it should be in the public domain. Why isn't it?
A: A copyright claim lasts for the life of the author, plus 70 years.

Q: Butts passed away in 1993, which would extend the copyright in this case to the year 2063.

A: Yes, but it’s really important to remember that the plaintiff is also asserting a trademark claim, and that lasts as long as you exploit it. Marks like Coca-Cola, Mercedes -- those can continue indefinitely as long as it remains in use. The law prevents third parties from making both literal use of a trademark as well as uses that are confusingly similar. The term “Scrabulous” is obviously intended to evoke the name Scrabble. Plainly, the people who created the game were trying to evoke the Scrabble mark.

Q: What’s the policy argument for having copyrights in the first place?
A: Th term of protection is what allows authors, composers and other creators to successfully exploit their works. If material immediately came into the public domain, then there would be no financial incentive to write a song, film a movie or undertake similar creative ventures. The reality is that all of the great authors, composers and artists wouldn’t be able to make a living. The public benefits by encouraging the arts. In return, artists and creators are compensated. If you took that away, you would have a much smaller body of creative works.

Q: So why create an expiration date?
A: It’s a balance that the framers of the Constitution had to make. They wanted to create financial incentives for artists and creators. But they also wanted to foster free speech. The quid pro quo is that after the period expires, a work comes into the public domain.

Q: Why 70 years?
A: That was fixed by an international treaty so that U.S. authors, performers and creators have the same right as people in other countries. The term of protection used to be shorter.

Q: What if the creators of Scrabulous were to change the name to “XYZ Game” and tweak the board and point system for their application. Would that make it legally permissible?
A: People are always free to create their own original games. But if they copy the creative expression of a third party, or they try to mimic the logos or trademarks for a famous brand, they will typically be enjoined. Intellectual property law protects against copying and unfair competition. But people are always allowed to engage in fair competition which would require them to create their own original game. The law requires a minimal level of “original and creative expression” to be entitled to copyright protection.

-- Alex Pham

Image courtesy of Electronic Arts

Twitter sees earth-shaking activity during SoCal quake

It has become almost cliché to say that Twitter users break news of natural disasters the minute they happen. But what about the minute before?

By most major media accounts, including the Associated Press and the LA Times, the 5.4-magnitude earthquake yesterday in Southern California happened at 11:42 a.m. But the first half-dozen tweets announcing the rumbling actually came in a minute earlier, according to Twitter's API data.

The man credited with breaking the news: Nicholas Hawkins, who wrote: "holy **** earthquake in so cal" (with the asterisks representing an unprintable yet understandable reaction to a temblor). The silver medal goes to Victor Hernandez, who was 18 seconds too late. Our findings even contradict that of Twitter itself, which listed the first quake-related message at 11:42 on its blog. Though it's possible that the minute discrepancy could be a server timing error, Twitter did not immediately respond to an email for comment.

Within the first hour, Twitter users seemed to cover...

Yahoo frees the music

Today, Yahoo offered the peace pipe to its music customers. The company said it would give coupons or refunds to those who discover that they can't play the music they acquired when the Yahoo Music Store closes its doors Sept. 30.

A week ago, Los Angeles Times editorial writer Jon Healey broke the story and revealed the ramifications of the music store's closure. The news came with a harsher announcement: Yahoo was yanking technical support that would allow customers to relicense the music if they transferred tracks to another computer or tried to play songs after changing operating systems. In other words, poof, there goes the digital music collection.

The upshot, Healey said, was that "customers won't be able to revive frozen tracks or move working ones onto new hard drives or computers, because Yahoo won't be providing any more keys to the songs' DRM wrappers."

Yahoo's decision today was a huge concession but not a big surprise, Healey says. Yahoo appears to be following the footsteps of Microsoft, which more than a month ago closed its MSN music store, angering its customers, then did a reversal and said it would continue to provide the technical support needed for people to listen to their music for three years.

The controversy adds fuel to the ongoing debate over the future of selling music with digital copying protections -- will people still trust buying music with digital copying protections if access to the music is shakier than savings in a failed bank?

-- Michelle Quinn

Photo: Caged birds in India. Credit: Piyal Adhikary / European Pressphoto Agency

ESPN to launch online action sports network

ESPN says it will launch an online hub for action sports. Think X Games, the twice-yearly competition that ESPN also created featuring skateboarding, surfing, motocross, snowboarding and others. Dawn Chmielewski of The Times has the scoop on the Disney-owned channel's fall launch of the ESPN Action Sports Network.

Photo: Bob Burnquist in the X Games Skateboard Big Air finals at the Staples Center in 2007. Credit: Richard Hartog / Los Angeles Times

Person Dawn Chmielewski

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