Hasbro and Mattel: Dumb, dumb, dumb
There are two ways you can look at a popular Facebook app like Scrabulous, which is clearly an online version of Scrabble, one of the most popular board games of all time (at least for anyone with a cottage where it sometimes rains and there is no television). One is to see it as a rip-off of a company’s trademarked property — which is clearly the way that Hasbro and Mattel see it, since they have reportedly sent legal letters to Facebook asking them to remove the app.
The other way to see to see it, of course, is as a tribute to the popularity of Scrabble, and a kind of viral marketing for the actual game. There are dozens of (admittedly anecdotal) stories of people going out and buying Scrabble games to continue their online addiction offline. How many of those people would have bought a Scrabble game before Scrabulous came along? A tiny number, at best. So why not just buy the app from the developers for a couple of hundred grand and call it a day?
From a legal perspective, Hasbro and Mattel are no doubt totally within their rights to have the app removed, or to sue, or do whatever they wish to protect their trademark. But from a marketing perspective I think they are missing the point. It reminds me of Coca-Cola’s initial reaction to the Eepybird video with the Coke and the Mentos — they said they were considering legal action, because “that’s not how we want consumers to interact with our brand.” Morons.
Eventually someone at Coca-Cola saw the light, thank God, and realized that how people interact with your brand is pretty much up to them, not you. If you’re smart, you will be glad they are interacting with it at all, and you will find a way to capitalize on it. I think another way to look at Scrabulous is as the online version of a tribute band, or like the fansites that specialize in fiction based on Star Trek or Star Wars — some companies see that as trademark infringement, others see it as an opportunity.
Discussion
for “Hasbro and Mattel: Dumb, dumb, dumb”
Is it a requirement for large corporations to have no common sense about how they deal with their customers? Hasbro/Mattel are not the first nor will they be the last to handle a situation with such awkwardness.
It's a sad state of affairs that this is commonplace and good customer service seems shocking.
Wouldn't it be deliciously ironic if Hasbro/Mattel got Facebook to remove the application and then tried to create their own and got sued by the developers of Scrabulous? What a sad situation.
Notice this comes after the 60 Minutes piece on Facebook where Mark Zukerburg openly admitted to playing Scableicious with his Grandparents not a sensible move by a CEO in this era of copyright infringement .
oh gosh - here we go again - mathew bubalah - let's get a grip :)
if they bought the app they would be saying "sure break the law, we will buy you anyway"
if they were smart, they would already be working on a legit version of scrabble on facebook, get the app removed because of the legal issues, inject their own version. done.
A fair point, Allen -- but your logic fell apart as soon as you got to
the part where you said "if they were smart..." :-)
They were stupid to bring this up without having an official version already in place. If they had their app ready, launched it, and then send the letter then at that point they could capitalize on the demand. The way it is playing out they are just pissing off a lot of people who are potential/current customers.
I think they had to do something, but they've chosen the wrong thing. It would have been far better to grant a limited-term license in return for some equity in the company and renaming it "Scrabble". Silly Hasbro/Mattel.
I have to admit that this is one instance where I have some sympathy for Mr. Big Evil Corporation.
It may very well be true that Scrabulous has led to higher sales of Scrabble, but on the other hand, Scrabulous and Facebook are profiting immensely through the sale of advertising on Scrabulous pages, and let's face it, it *is* a complete clone of the real Scrabble game which is copyright. I don't think that can be considered fair use.
Hasbro/Mattel deserve a cut of those revenues, and if it takes legal papers to get it, then I think that's fair.
Attaboy, my point is that doing so would be totally fair, and legal,
and right -- and dumb. I'm not saying they don't have the legal right
to do it, because clearly they do. It's still a stupid way to
proceed, IMHO.
I agree. But I'm saying they should be demanding that Scrabulous pay a license or share their revenues, not demanding that it be shut down.
I think that would be totally appropriate.
to use some basic logic - it'd be like a thug stealing your car and then offering to sell it back to you.
i can't make it any clearer for you than that mathew!
Allen, it isn't anything like that -- and I think you probably know
that. In any case, I've already admitted that Hasbro and Mattel are
well within their rights to do what they are doing. I just think it's
dumb.
As for legitimizing theft by buying the app, they are doing no such
thing -- they are acknowledging creativity, and jump-starting an
online strategy which appears to be virtually non-existent. It's not
like the app developers are selling a board game called Scrabulous and
trying to convince people it's the real Scrabble.
I'm going to take a BMW and not pay for it. My own personal tribute to BMW. Call it viral marketing. It's not like I have the money to buy a BMW, so there's no harm really because I would never have bought one in the first place.
It's a sad state of affairs when an entity (in this case Mattel/Hasbro) are the losers for sticking up for what's right. Where's the criticism of the other side for doing the wrong thing? The mob mentality of web2.0. ..
I think it's a sad state of affairs when someone comments on an issue
and uses ridiculous metaphors that have no relationship to what's
being discussed. Trademark and copyright infringement are not theft
-- period. And what constitutes infringement online is still very
much a grey area, which is why we're debating it. If you want to
bring a real argument to the table, I encourage you to do so.
If they *don't* go after scrabulous, they risk losing their trademark. Thermos. If they do go after them, they're called losers. It wasn't viral marketing when copycat companies tried to sell 'thermos' flasks either. I think you describing copyright theft as "viral marketing" is equally ridiculous. If they really wanted to do that, why didn't THEY approach mattel/hasbro first? Why are the infringers made to look like the good guys here?
[If you don't want people to post anonymously, configure it that way. And I'll go away and not comment. Just my choice, sorry.]
"If they *don't* go after scrabulous, they risk losing their trademark."
That may be so where similar products in an identical market are
concerned -- and in any case, it takes a lot longer than a few months
to "lose" a trademark. In any case, that's not what we're talking
about. One is a board game and the other is an online app integrated
into a social networking site. Completely different animals.
It's not copyright theft -- for one thing, it's a trademark, not a
copyright. And it's not theft.
As for posting anonymously, I don't care whether you post anonymously
or not, but I do care whether your argument makes sense or not, and so
far it doesn't.
let's all remember that mathew supports(-ed) lane hartwell's photo's being used without her permission.
Allen, that's not strictly relevant -- although it's true, and I have
no hesitation about saying it. I would support it again. But this
isn't about fair use. I'm not arguing that what the Scrabulous guys
did was fair use (since there isn't really a similar concept as it
applies to trademarks).
I've already admitted that Hasbro and Mattel are legally in the right.
But so were the record companies (in many cases) when they started
suing people, and look where that got them. It certainly didn't
improve their business prospects any, did it?
im just building a foundation :)
if they buy scrabouls then let's you and I make an online candy land, deal?
That's a disingenuous argument and you know it. You aren't driving to Mattel headquarters and taking something from them. You aren't even stealing their sales with a clone in the same market.
A somewhat better analogy might be that you have decided to build a BMW driving simulator for the PC without licensing the brand.
Or better yet, you have decided to build BMW-style go-karts for kids in your neighborhood. They caught on fast, so more people started asking for them, and you started painting sponsor logos on the sides of them so that you could afford to continue the project. Somebody from BMW notices, and has you shut down.
Yeah it's within their rights, but it's a bad PR move. They'd be better off negotiating a license in return for turning the whole thing into a TV ad or something.
The real problem isn't right or wrong. It's dumb and smart. Dumb is making Scrabble fans everywhere have conversations like:
Fan A: "What happened to Scrabbulous? I loved that game!"
Fan B: "Mattel sued and had it shut down."
Fan A: "****ers*
Exactly my point, Brandon. Well said.
Scrabulous is a digital entity, Scrabble is a board game (physical entity). Your analogy falls apart because of that.
No one is saying that Mattel/Hasbro is overstepping their rights or anything. It's just a poor business decision because they look like the monolithic corporation that is too short sighted.
you nailed my annoyance with your last paragraph.
these corporate tactics are all about control/domination.
i'm sure at some point some executives thought to themselves that they could trademark the alphabet as well.
douchebags
Sorry, I agree with the commenters here (and at TechCrunch last week when this came up). The dumb shmucks were clearly the Scrabulous guys, who knew this would happen.
Hasbro/Mattel is within their rights (which you acknowledge), but had no other actual option. Buying the app would have signalled to others to do the same thing (by creating "Scrabbalicious", "Scrabbtastic", etc).
Sure, in a perfect world they'd have been able to buy the value, buy the momentum, etc. But, in a perfect world, people wouldn't be morons and start companies with the same name, design, rules, trademark, etc. In a world where one company has already done that, Mattel/Hasbro had no choice.
Buying them simply wasn't an option. It's not like stealing a car. But I don't see any resolution that doesn't have someone else doing what Scrabbulous did.
Btw, as this is the first comment since you installed Disqus, let me just note that it's totally useless on a mobile device, which is where I do most of my commenting.
I don't buy the argument that acquiring the app -- or what about just
getting them to change the name to Scrabble and charging them a
licensing fee? -- encourages anyone to do anything. And even if it
did, Hasbro and Mattel can go after the second or third attempts just
as easily as they have the first one.
Here's a thought experiment: If Scrabulous was called Word Prize, and
used different colours for the board, and the tiles looked a little
different, would we be having this conversation? So maybe the creators
were dumb to use the same look as the game -- I still think it would
make more sense for Hasbro to find a way to make it work for them
rather than against them.
Thanks for the input on Disqus on a mobile -- I hadn't thought of
that. I just reply to comments, which is easily done through regular
email.
Yeah, the discusson would be different if they hadn't stolen anything (and make no mistake, when you take someone else's idea and use every piece of it changing nothing but adding a few things it's still stealing ... whether or not the copyright/trademark/IP law looks at t that way).
If the discussion were different, this would be an acquisition opportunity because it would be a branch-off audience segment for Hasbro/Mattel/etc.
But the core of this, based on my chats with folk a bit closer to this on the Mattel side, is not wanting to encourage future folk to do it. And, yeah, I know folk who are saying if Scrabbulous had been bought they'd have started their own, similar, app, with a few more features.
Have to disagree. Taking someone's idea and using it is not stealing -- not as far as the law is concerned, and not as far as I'm concerned. It's copying. Sometimes that's legal and sometimes it's not.
Ideas are not property, period. They have some protection when they become products, as Scrabble has, but the idea of a game based on spelling words is not property and therefore can't be stolen.
In any case, regardless of the law, from my research Hasbro and Mattel both seem to spend a lot more of their time shutting down people with good ideas than they do coming up with their own online projects.
Nobody said "a game based on words" (see my earlier comment that, yeah, if all the rules and design were changed this'd be a different conversation).
Just the same way that you're tired of the stealing car metaphor, can we drop the pretense that everyone who's even vaguely supporting Mattel/Hasbro thinks "every game with words" is being discussed?
And, given that I already indicated "whether or not the copyright/trademark/IP law looks at t that way", feel free to drop "the law" bit as well.
The core of this is pretty simple.
Young team with no exposure steals idea, design and name of popular product, ports it to another use and is then shocked, SHOCKED I tell you when the actual creator of all of the above gets pissed.
The creator of all of the above has 3 choices:
1. Ignore it (thus invalidating trademarks and such)
2. Buy it (thus, encouraging others to do the same thing... and if you don't believe it does encourage others, feel free to indicate how it *discourages* them)
3. Shut it down / seize it / etc
Or feel free to ignore this, since I've already said all of this before and you continue to latch onto law/stealing/minutiea ;-)
Jeremy, I'm not going to drop "the law bit," because you said it was stealing and it's not. That's an important distinction. And it has a lot to do with what the best course of action for Hasbro and Mattel to take is -- if it's theft, then it makes sense to sue them, shut them down, etc. Except that it's not theft.
Those whose content or trademarks are copied have a whole range of ways they can respond. In the case of fansites that use trademarked content from shows such as Star Trek, for example, some are seen as harmless and in other cases there is legal action or they are charged a licensing fee. Hasbro and Mattel have the same options here.
1. Charge the creators a fee and change the name to Scrabble
2. Buy the app -- which doesn't preclude any legal action against future trademark infringers.
3. Ignore it and sell more Scrabble games -- which doesn't do anything to damage the trademark whatsoever.