Anyone logging into the super popular Scrabulous board game application on Facebook today from the US or Canada was greeted by this message, “Scrabulous is disabled for US and Canadian users until further notice.” The demise of Scrabulous, one of Facebook’s most popular applications, was a long time coming and pretty well expected by anyone following the story.
今天，从美国或加拿大登录Facebook的超级流行Scrabulous棋盘游戏应用程序的所有人都收到了以下消息：“ Scrabulous已被美国和加拿大用户禁用，直至另行通知。” Facebook最受欢迎的应用程序之一Scrabulous的消亡是一个漫长的过程，并且所有对此故事进行追随的人都非常期待。
Last week, Hasbro’s general counsel, Barry Nagler, said that Scrabulous was a “clear and blatant infringement of [Hasrbo’s] Scrabble intellectual property” and suing the application’s creators was an effort to protect “the integrity of the Scrabble brand.” However, it’s becoming a bit had to sort out just what intellectual property Hasbro owns regarding Scrabble.
上周，孩之宝的总顾问巴里·纳格勒(Barry Nagler)表示，Scrabulous是“对[Hasrbo] Scrabble知识产权的明显和公然侵犯”，起诉该应用程序的创建者是为了保护“ Scrabble品牌的完整性”。 但是，必须要弄清楚Hasbro拥有有关Scrabble的知识产权。
According to the US Copyright Office games are not protected by copyright law:
根据美国版权局的游戏，不受版权法保护：
The idea for a game is not protected by copyright. The same is true of the name or title given to the game and of the method or methods for playing it.
游戏创意不受版权保护。 赋予游戏名称或标题以及玩游戏的方法也是如此。
Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form. Copyright protection does not extend to any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in the development, merchandising, or playing of a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles.
版权仅保护作者以文学，艺术或音乐形式表达的特定方式。 版权保护不扩展到游戏开发，销售或玩游戏涉及的任何想法，系统，方法，设备或商标材料。 游戏公开后，版权法中的任何内容都不会阻止他人基于类似原理开发其他游戏。
Some material prepared in connection with a game may be subject to copyright if it contains a sufficient amount of literary or pictorial expression. For example, the text matter describing the rules of the game, or the pictorial matter appearing on the gameboard or container, may be registrable.
如果与游戏相关的某些材料包含足够数量的文学或图画表达，则可能会受到版权保护。 例如，描述游戏规则的文字内容，或出现在游戏板或容器上的图片内容可能是可注册的。
So strictly speaking of copyright, the only thing Hasbro can lay claim to in the US are the rules, the box art, and the visual cues on the game board and game pieces. Scrabulous doesn’t appear to infringe on any of that — they don’t print any rules (they link to a copy on Wikipedia), nor have they reproduced the Scrabble logo or any box or board art. Their game board is very similar, but methods can’t be copyrighted.
因此严格来说，版权，孩之宝在美国唯一可以宣称的是规则，盒子美术以及游戏板上和游戏部件上的视觉提示。 Scrabulous似乎没有侵犯任何上述内容-他们没有打印任何规则(它们链接到Wikipedia上的副本)，也没有复制Scrabble徽标或任何框或板艺术品。 他们的游戏板非常相似，但是方法不能享有版权。
They can be patented, though. However, patents generally only last 20 years — so any patents on Scrabble, which was sold starting in 1948 — have likely long since expired. Which means that only leaves trademark.
它们可以申请专利。 但是，专利通常只能使用20年，因此Scrabble的任何专利(从1948年开始出售)都可能已经过期很长时间了。 这意味着仅保留商标。
The name Scrabble is a trademark of Hasbro in the US and Canada (and Mattel in the rest of the world). Colors and product design can also be trademarked. Scrabulous most definitely infringes on the Scrabble trademark — it is close enough that there is a likelihood of confusion between the two products. The colors and design of the game board could also be trademarked, which Scrabulous also would have infringed upon. But could a name change and slight redesign of the game board (tile size, fonts, colors, text placement) have been enough to save Scrabulous?
Scrabble名称是孩之宝在美国和加拿大(以及美泰公司在世界其他地方)的商标。 颜色和产品设计也可以是商标。 Scrabulous最明显地侵犯了Scrabble商标-足够接近，两种产品之间可能会产生混淆。 游戏机板的颜色和设计也可能带有商标，Scrabulous也会因此受到侵犯。 但是，对游戏板进行更改名称和稍微重新设计(大小，字体，颜色，文本位置)是否足以节省Scrabulous？
That’s what Bogglific — a Boggle clone also served a take down noticed by Hasbro this past winter — did and they’re still around. Blogglific is now called Prolific, and made very slight changes to scoring (the game’s creator added a bonus tile and changed how much found words are worth). The game, though, is essentially the same as Boggle in both look and game play. Scrabulous could try the same thing and skirt any lawsuits that Hasbro tries to throw at them.
这就是Bogglific的工作-Boggle的克隆人在过去的冬天也为孩之宝注意到了失败记录-这样做了，他们仍然在附近。 Blogglific现在被称为Prolific，并且对得分进行了很小的改动(游戏的创建者添加了额外的花砖，并更改了找到的单词的价值)。 但是，游戏在外观和游戏玩法上与Boggle基本相同。 Scrabulous可以尝试同样的事情，并避开Hasbro试图向他们提出的任何诉讼。
Caveat: I am not a lawyer, so if I’ve gotten any of this wrong, please tell me why in the comments! (For example, though copyright law doesn’t protect games, the Copyright Office page does talk about copyright’s inability to stop others from creating games based on “similar principles,” whereas Scrabulous was a direct copy of Scrabble. That goes beyond “similar” and perhaps that matters — does anyone know?)
警告：我不是律师，所以如果我发现任何错误，请在评论中告诉我原因！ (例如，尽管版权法并不保护游戏，但版权局页面上确实在谈论版权无法阻止他人基于“相似原理”创建游戏，而Scrabulous是Scrabble的直接副本。这超出了“相似”范围。也许很重要-有人知道吗？
翻译自: https://www.sitepoint.com/scrabulous-is-toast-did-hasbro-really-have-a-case/
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