The Indian Scrabulous Decision
Thanks to reader Apar Gupta, I have the text of the decision by the High Court of Delhi in Mattel, Inc. v. Agarwalla, a copyright and trademark action by Mattel against the Agarwalla brothers, the makers of Scrabulous. I posted a brief news item about the case earlier, and posted a four-part series on the American lawsuit against Scrabulous over on Prawfsblawg in August. (See Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV.)
As the Agarwalla brothers reported a few weeks ago, the Indian decision held that Scrabulous did not likely infringe on Scrabble’s copyrights, but that the name “Scrabulous” does likely infringe on Scrabble’s trademarks. The court therefore issued an “ad interim injunction,” which I assume is the same as a preliminary injunction, against further use of the Scrabulous name. But my primary interest is copyright law, and the court’s copyright analysis, although very brief, is fascinating. Essentially, the court held that because the board and rules are necessary for game play, and game play is not copyrightable, therefore the board and rules are not copyrightable either. I think this probably goes too far, but it’s an interesting example of a court grappling with the nature of copyright in games.