I recently commented on a local car dealership changing names and throwing away their namesake. Please click here to read Anthony Juliano's words of wisdom at his Blog SoundBite Back. (Also read the comments to see some follow up discussion.)
Yesterday the subject of names was mentioned in the morning paper and was followed up in SoundBite Back.
This morning on N.P.R.'s morning edition I heard about Hasbro trying to shut down an on-line knock-off of their trademarked Scrabble game that is being played on Facebook.
Scrabble Maker Hasbro Mad over Scrabulous
Morning Edition, January 15, 2008 · Scrabble is one of the most popular board games with more than 100 million sets sold worldwide. An online version of the game, called Scrabulous is getting a lot of attention. But Hasbro, the maker of Scrabble, isn't happy. That's because it isn't the maker of Scrabulous. Click here to go to the NPR Page on the Web and listen to the story.
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3 comments:
I'm a big Scrabulous fan, but it does seem like a pretty huge infringement on Hasbro's intellectual property rights. But I'll keep playing until they shut it down!
Do you buy the argument that it's creating Scrabble fans?
Yes, It is creating Scrabble fans, and Hasbro can be the hero by buying Scrabulous and make money, or waste a bunch of cash on lawyers.
Last night I read about someone having their web domain stolen. It's a long story but I found it interesting to read at http://www.davidairey.co.uk/google-gmail-security-hijack/
But this is something that could help launch Hasbro into the next tier of games. I just tried the Scrabble demo at Hasbro's web site and it simply is not fun.
Good points. My take is that Scrabulous is talking only to people who already know/like Scrabble, but I could very well be wrong. I completely agree with you, that, that Hasbro's money would be better spent on creating a better online version of its product. Great social networking opportunities, there, too, but they seem stuck on doing it the way they've always done it.
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