DRM (Delayed Rights Management)
By Dan O'Connor January 16th, 2008
In Stories
So, Facebook have been asked to remove the Scrabulous application by Mattel and Hasbro, the two companies who own the global rights to the board game, Scrabble.
Some thoughts that strike me straight away:
a) Did anyone else, like me, assume that with such a very close name, Scrabulous was official?
b) Did the inventors of Scrabulous really imagine this wouldn’t happen? and
c) What the hell took Mattel and Hasbro so long to realise that their rights were being infringed?
1 Matt Rebeiro // Jan 16, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Bets on how long it takes for Scrabulous to return with enough tweaks to make them, legally, not ripping Mattel off…?
More seriously though this could be the end for a lot of applications including one of my faves: ATTACK (Risk by any other name).
2 Dan O'Connor // Jan 16, 2008 at 5:45 pm
They should call it ‘generic word game’ and have done with it.
3 Matt Rebeiro // Jan 17, 2008 at 12:19 am
According to News.com one Scrabulous user said “I’ll go on hunger strike” if Facebook remove Scrabulous. Now THAT is sad…