On Tuesday afternoon, Search for “Wordle” on the iOS App Store pop up a handful of apps Apply the name and play of Simple word game that has went viral in recent weeks. But none of them iOS apps made by Josh Wardle, software engineer in Brooklyn, who created a free web based game last October.
All those clone apps are gone now, the apparent result of a belated purge by App Store reviewers after a number of social media attention. But this may not mean the end of Wordle duplicates. Those quick-delete articles talk about the complex legal and social landscape surrounding copied apps and the protection developers can ask for their game ideas.
Who owns ‘Wordle’?
For starters, it’s important to note that Wordle’s basic five-letter guessing game is not a completely original idea in and of itself. The same basic gameplay was popularized by Lingo, a game show from the 80s in the US and other countries. The two-player pen and paper game Jotto, dating from 1955, will also be familiar to Wordle players. Before that, a more traditional version of the game called Bulls and Cows had been played since the 19th century. at least one source.
Conveniently, none of this history causes legal problems for Wordle itself. “Whenever you copyright, you’re protecting the wording, not the idea” Dallas attorney Mark Methenitis told Ars. “It’s a problem that a lot of people have trouble with, especially when you get into games.”
In other words, it’s extremely difficult to patent an abstract game engine like “guess five-letter words and make suggestions based on the correct letters.” A game developer can patent application about an original gaming idea, a legal process was used to choke video games Replication in the past. But obtaining a patent is a long and arduous process, which can be broken if there is “advanced art” before the idea (or if the mechanic can be legally taken for granted). physical).
Free Brand for All
Separate from copyright or patents, trademarks can at least legally protect the Wordle name from being exploited by copyists. But unlike copyright, which is automatically applied when a work is published, trademarks provide very limited protection until and unless they are registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Ky.
Quick search on the USPTO . website shows two earlier trademarks for software named “Wordle”, one from 2010 and one from 2013. Both trademarks were abandoned shortly after the initial filing, but Wardle does not appear to have filed an application. trademarked for his suddenly popular name.
That made the “Wordle” trademark subject to legality, a situation where a company called Monkey Labs Inc. took advantage of. On January 7, that outfit filed a private trademark application for “Wordle”, claiming ownership of the name for “downloadable computer application software for social networking, specifically for posting , display or display information in the field of video games over the Internet, in particular software for playing word games.”
There may be grounds to cancel the mark for commercial misrepresentation under the The Lanham Act of 1947, but any such legal argument could be an uphill battle. That’s especially true because other games and apps used the name before Wardle created it. There are currently three games on iOS App Store—Wordle !, Wordle – Word Puzzle and Wordles — predates Wardle by many years. While none of these bear any mechanical resemblance to the current viral hit, they have as many confirmations of historical use of the name “Wordle” as anyone.
Attack of the clones
Branding aside, the copyright law that protects Wordle itself helps protect anyone who wants to create their own version of the same basic idea. That means there’s not much the law can do to prevent other five-letter guessing games from existing. Ars Technica readers might remember the same iOS clone explosion face the likes of Vlambeer’s Radical Fishing and Super Carton Boy, as well as Jenova Chen’s fl0w, Spry Fox’s The town of Ba, and countless others.
But while idea of Wordle is not legally protected, specific game expression of the idea that is. So, a copy that has copied the user interface, layout, and other design elements of Wardle’s version could still be breaking the law. Back in 2012, the Tetris Company used this argument to closed a blatant special Tetris copied on App Store.
