Mattel, those fabulous folks who brought you poison toys from China; the litigious giant who likes to sue students who use Barbie in art projects, has teamed up with Hasbro to sue the creators of Scrabulous, one of Facebook’s most popular applications.
How many points for “dumbass”?
The two companies, which between them own the worldwide rights to the board game, claim that the online version developed by 20-something Indian brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla infringes their copyright. So Hasbro asked Facebook to take down Scrabulous – which attracts over 600,000 daily users and nets the brothers $25,000 worth of advertising a month.
What’s the point of turning your biggest fans into criminals? Why not just buy the company? Why not advertise the Scrabble board game on the Scrabulous pages of Facebook?
In their rush to sue, the two giant companies are missing some important points:
• There is such a thing as bad publicity.
• Facebook Scrabulous users are obsessed with the game, and angry that they may lose it. Many of them are parents, and parents buy toys from companies like Mattel and Hasbro, but not if they hate the toymakers.
• There already are more than 55,000 members in a Save Scrabulous Facebook Group and talk of boycott of Mattel and Hasbro
• Mattel and Hasbro are missing the huge opportunity to buy Scrabulous, enhance the reputation of the game and their brand, and have some fun.
• If they don’t buy Scrabulous, Mattel and Hasbro ought to hire the Agarwalla brothers to create an equally addictive online version of Scrabble for other social networks, from Bebo to MySpace to a 140-character version for Twitter.
• Realize that Scrabulous turns people on to Scrabble and other word games and creates opportunity for Mattel and Hasbro.
Related:
Shel Holtz
Matt Dickman
Anticipate This!
Mattel and Hasbro, in Rush to Sue Over Scrabulous on Facebook, Miss the Real Opportunity
BL Ochman | January 23, 2008 | Permanent Link | Comments (13) | TrackBack (
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Categories: Worst Practices
Tags: , Hasbro, Mattel, poison toys from China, Scrabulous, worst practices
Tags: , Hasbro, Mattel, poison toys from China, Scrabulous, worst practices
Finally! Someone with the ability to point out the real issues and missed opportunities at hand. Well done. As if things couldn’t get worse for Mattel…tsk tsk….bad execs listening to lawyers rather than their pr peeps. That is, of course, if Mattel has anyone left worth listening to…
But see the US Government view on copyright for games “Copyright protection does not extend to any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in the development, merchandising, or playing of a game.”
So it looks as though there is a lot less room for a copyright action here than might appear – and than Hasbro might wish.
Oh bother – I’ve forgotten the original source for this and can’t track it down. TechCrunch maybe?
I would say check out the site of Shel Hotlz where he explains why he think Hasbro MUST do this.
Blame the law not the lawyers
I think it is an interesting view on the event.
Dear BL,
All valid points – the FT also included the following from the other side of the fence:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e354f0ca-c568-11dc-811a-0000779fd2ac.html
and said:
“Against whatever extra sales the online game may generate, must be set the damage it has already done to any licensed version that comes along. The presence of the unofficial game means that an authorised game will lack novelty. The ability to charge for it, once players have become used to joining in for free, is also reduced, and the brand itself has been diluted. Serious glitches experienced on Scrabulous could make players less willing to try an official online Scrabble game.
There is also the fact that Electronic Arts has a licensing agreement for electronic versions of Hasbro games until 2013. Any settlement between the Scrabulous entrepreneurs and Hasbro and Mattel, must surely take account of the cost to EA as well.
The quarrel over Scrabulous is a classic example of the challenges in maintaining intellectual property rights in a world where so much content is freely available on the internet. It requires nimble footwork to defend the product without sounding like a killjoy.”
Um Hesz – there’s a link to Shel’s post in “Related” at the bottom of the post. It’s there to provide his point of view.
Jasbinder – none of the damage will be fixed by taking a sledgehammer approach to the Scrabulous developers. All Mattel and Hasbro have accomplished with their approach is to piss off fans of Scrabulous.
If they’d looked at the situation from a marketing point of view, they’d be discussing buying the company or the code, and getting a fan base of 2.5 million users with it.
And, as I said, many of those users have children for whom they buy toys. So Hasbro and Mattel might like to keep that in mind as well.
tsk tsk tsk. Once again it amazes me that in the age of dialogue, the age of consumer empowerment, that a company as big as Hasbro or Mattel hasn’t cottoned on to something great for their brand. Instead, they have insanely brought the lawyers in when they should have brought in procurement or development to help the brothers develop further.
Shame on them.
Great point, Matt. Bringing in lawyers is a knee-jerk reaction, and it shows that company brass really doesn’t understand the positive social media buzz
B.L. – First time checking out your site! (Toby Bloomberg told me about it, by the way.) Love your posts! I’ll definitely be back.
This one is a fabulous post, B.L. Congratulations. You are a wonder. Such good sense.
all I can say is WOW!
It is INCREDULOUS to say the least. Great perspective BL and of cousre there oughta be a better way! Can’t we all just get along?
The age old adage of Follow the Money also comes to mind! Why not MAKE more money for all three (4 inclusing EA) players, and Create something
rather than tearing it down?
Build an alliance. Answer to the consumers and listen to the USERS! You are correct that this appears to be a real missed opporunity indeed,
Bob
Mattel/Hasbro should have acted sooner if they wanted to come out of this situation looking good – Scrabulous has got far too many fans now that will be outraged if the app is axed. I can see why they feel the need to do something about others making money from what is essentially their game, but agree that they have dealt with this in a really bad way
My instinct would be that sales of scrabble would have been pushed up by people using the facebook version? I’m guessing that a whole generation of consumers is now well into scrabble, and will play it in different formats forever…
Much as we all seem to love Scrabulous, I think it’s pretty obvious that it’s a massive infringement of someone else’s rights. It’s a bit like the old Napster, we all love it but we know deep down it’s wrong…
The thoughts that it would damage an online version of the “authentic” scrabble game is bogus. I play on a number of sites that are free or payable, and I pay at two of them for scrabble. As well, there is no online version of scrabble by the game “creators”. and probably never will be. They will spend their time destroying the relaxation of thousands of people worldwide, (as they did on Atari Play) and then “create an online version that we will willingly jump to play at?” NOT! Hello!! Leagues were destroyed when AtariPlay was destroyed. A place that we tremendously enjoyed relaxing at was torn down. And now this will be done at Scrabulous? I for one would not go to a Mattel site willingly if they can not be decent about this. Yes, I can understand frowning upon “copyright” infringement, if it can be viably proved. However, there are better ways to frown, and bullying thousands of people in the process isn’t one of them.