Looney Labs Icehouse Mailing list Archive

Re: [Icehouse] On the Creation of (Looney Pyramid) Games...

  • Fromvijay chopra <vjchopra@xxxxxxxxx>
  • DateMon, 28 Mar 2011 19:49:36 +0100
On 28 March 2011 19:24, Craig Forbes <cpforbes@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> That case is a messy mix of trademark
> and copyright issues. Trademark law is much different from copyright
> and it requires much more vigilant litigation of infringement.

That's the exact reason I brought it up - I was just trying to say
you'll almost certainly be clear in terms of copyright, but be careful
that infringe in some other way.

By saying "inspired by x" you're potentially opening yourself up to a
patent or trademark lawsuit that might have otherwise gone undetected
because your rules have been so modified for the Icehouse system that
no one links the two. If the Scrabulous guys had just called it "Mixed
Words" or something, and put out a very slightly different board to
the official scrabble board, they would have been in the clear and
Hasbro would probably never have noticed them. By giving a nod to the
original Scrabble in the name "Scrabulous", they gave Hasbro ammo for
a trademark case.

regards,
Vijay