Welcome to Purple Pawn, covering games played around the world by billions of people every day.
In 2000, Hasbro sent a C&D letter to Randy Cassingham over his “Get Out of Hell Free” cards, despite the fact that it’s not difficult to see that they would be covered by parody laws. Mind you, Randy was selling them for a meager profit.
After Randy added a statement to the effect that the cards were not endorsed by Hasbro, Hasbro decided to drop the matter.
Which makes one scratch their head in light of this week’s news: Hasbro just sent a C&D letter to Randy Cassingham over his “Get Out of Hell Free” cards, claiming that they had just “recently became aware” of them. And demanding, no less, “information concerning the length of time that you have sold the infringing cards and stickers, the number of units that have been sold, and the total revenue you have received to date. We will then be in a position to discuss monetary compensation for your unauthorized use.”
Hasbro is either desperately in need of cash, or they’ve recently let go of their old bad lawyers (you know, the ones that responsible for the Scrabulous fiasco) and hired a bunch of new, cheaper bad ones. Who don’t know about previously dropped legal actions by Hasbro. Of course, if they’re desperately in need of cash, they shouldn’t be wasting it on frivolous legal action. There goes a few tens of thousands of dollars down the drain.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Legal actions like this aren’t about money. They are for the purpose of full employment of attorneys. These folks have to do something to justify their positions…..
As far as I could tell, Hasbro got exactly what they wanted out of the Scrabulous “fiasco.”