Scrabulous: Social Media & Intellectual Property Realities

There are probably fewer hot potatoes on the web than intellectual property. Napster anyone?

According to news reports, Facebook apparently tried to broker an agreement between the parties. And there may have been options here for Hasbro short of shutdown which might have created a win-win for the Scrabble brand and for the developers too. We may never know.

The Scrabulous case should be a poignant reminder to all of us that a cool idea -- even a popular cool idea -- which violates someone else's IP is ultimately a bad idea.
Many innovators have made their run with an original idea; others have sought to perfect an existing one but most try to work within the existing legal framework -- costly and time-consuming as that can be.

It is amazing to consider for a moment the creativity in the marketplace which allows innovative platforms like Facebook -- with its myriad of applications -- and others to flourish. The web still seems like a wide open frontier in so many ways and there is much potential which has yet to be tapped.

There are still rules which protect the inventor and the invention, however. No harm in being reminded of that in the open source, free download, API-licious world of social media we all love.