It's more complicated than this, though. Copyright protects the direct expression of a game, but not the rules themselves. You can't copyright the way scrabble is played any more than you can copyright the game of "football" under the laws governing "the NFL rulebook" (an actual document).

What seems to have happened is that they decided they just didn't want to fight this, and I don't blame them. Ultimately though, it's not at all clear that Hasbro would have won this as a copyright case. Note that at least one other Hasbro property, the AD&D 1st edition rules, exists in a "free" form on the web as "OSRIC", using rules compatible with the original but without any of the copyrighted material. The Wikipedia page on the game talks about this in more depth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSRIC

And to be clear: "Scrabulous" almost certainly did have a trademark problem, as it clearly evokes the name of the original game.

> You can't copyright the way scrabble is played any more than you can copyright the game of "football" under the laws governing "the NFL rulebook" (an actual document).

As companies other than EA have discovered, you can use the non-copyrighted rules to the game, but you can't use the NFL team names and logos in your version. Scrabulous picked a name that was a trademark problem and copied the board exactly to add a copyright problem to the mix.

Created in 1938 and protected through 2063. One hundred and twenty five (125) years of protection does seem like a bit much...

Blame Mickey Mouse. An old analysis: http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20020305_sprigman.ht...

I agree. The problem with copyright law is not whether someone can sue someone else for ripping an idea off. Indeed, that's the point of copyright law. The problem is the length of time a copyright can be held. It was short, initially, with the intent of keeping people innovative. It's now been turned into a way to hold on to cash cows.