http://madisonian.net/2008/01/29/absolutely-scrabulous/ a blog about law, tech, culture, and related things Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:59:42 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 http://madisonian.net/2008/01/29/absolutely-scrabulous/comment-page-1/#comment-234163 Bruce Boyden Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:23:54 +0000 http://madisonian.net/archives/2008/01/29/absolutely-scrabulous/#comment-234163 There's also the alleged "blackletter law," cited in Nimmer ch. 2, that games are not copyrightable, although game artwork such as a board can be copyrighted as a graphic or pictorial work. So that needs to be factored in here too. Also, rules are like recipes, in that they are not inherently copyrightable, but may be if additional expression is added. I don't know exactly how Scrabulous works, but it looks like the infringement claim would have to be in copying protectible elements of the board -- and given how highly stylized the Scrabulous board is, we don't have verbatim copying here. Still, there's the alphabet quilt case; in theory just the colors and the arrangement may be enough to capture the "total concept and feel." There’s also the alleged “blackletter law,” cited in Nimmer ch. 2, that games are not copyrightable, although game artwork such as a board can be copyrighted as a graphic or pictorial work. So that needs to be factored in here too. Also, rules are like recipes, in that they are not inherently copyrightable, but may be if additional expression is added. I don’t know exactly how Scrabulous works, but it looks like the infringement claim would have to be in copying protectible elements of the board — and given how highly stylized the Scrabulous board is, we don’t have verbatim copying here. Still, there’s the alphabet quilt case; in theory just the colors and the arrangement may be enough to capture the “total concept and feel.”

]]>