Since Facebook changed its Scrabble app earlier this month, thousands of players have taken to the social media site to complain and there have been protests and boycotts by the fiercely competitive players, who have had their player history erased.
The changes have been made by Electronic Arts (EA), which took over the running of the app from Scrabble brand owner Mattel at the end of May, who have apologised for the disruption but have no intention of doing anything about it.
However, the furore is not the only argument to beset the game, as a recent High Court judgment concerning the Scrabble ‘tile’ or ‘tile-mark’ trademark highlights the tension between trademarks and the functional elements of toys and games.
In this case, it was the UK trademark of the shape of the letter tile that was in contention. The registration consisted of side, plan and perspective views of the tile, together with the description: ‘The mark consists of a three-dimensional ivory-coloured tile on the top surface of which is shown a letter of the Roman alphabet and a numeral in the range 1 to 10.’
However, rival social media games’ maker Zynga developed a game called ‘SCRAMBLE WITH FRIENDS’, which incorporated a similar tile to the tile-mark.
Unsurprisingly, Mattel objected but Zynga counterclaimed that the tile-mark was not a ‘sign’ capable of distinguishing Mattel’s goods or services and therefore not able to be registered as a trademark.
The court agreed with Zynga that, given the many permutations of which the tile-mark could comprise, it was not a sign but a ‘mere property of the goods’, so granted Zynga’s summary judgement.