Wordle rip-offs want your cash — but are they legal?
The clones have arrived
What’s in a name
The biggest legal issue for Shakked may have been his choice of title: “Wordle – The App.” It certainly sounds familiar.
While the original game doesn’t appear to be trademark protected, the clone could still have violated IP rights.
In the UK, for instance, copying a name — or even using a similar one — can be a breach of “passing off,” a law that protects unregistered rights from misrepresentation.
The Wordle copycat could be accused of passing off because the market may assume that the two games come from the same source.
However, the “free to play” aspect of Wordle could undermine this allegation.
“Is the creator trading if there are no user costs involved and no revenue is generated through advertisements? The answer is, probably not,” saidDaniel Goodall, associate and IP expert at the law firmShakespeare Martineau.
“This puts Wordle’s creator in a difficult position in terms of protecting the name without any evidence of trading activity.”
Gaming the system
The name is not the only IP issue at play. There are also potential infringements of gameplay elements, but these are harder to protect.
“You cannot copyright an idea, so the game mechanics could not be protected in this way,” said Goodall.
“However, copyright can exist in various aspects of the game itself, for example, graphics, text, and sounds, provided they are sufficiently original.”
Wordle, however, is quite a basic concept, so the creator may struggle to prove sufficient originality. Indeed, the game has faced its own accusations of plagiarism.
Forms of flattery
After his app was removed by Apple, Shakkedacknowledgedthat “he had crossed a line.” Yet he argued thatWordle is itself a ripoff of the game show Lingo.
Lingo’s current presenter, Adil Ray, tweeted that Wordle “basically is OURS.”
Yet Ray didn’t mention that his show was also strikingly similar to several predecessors, such as Mastermind and Jotto.
As former Kickstarter CTOAndy Baio noted, games with similar mechanics have existed since at least the 19th century.
There is, however, a difference between adapting mechanics and tricking people into paying for a game that they could already get for free. In the end, Apple intervened before the law did.
“What is clear is that, whether or not these cloned games constitute an infringement of Wardle and [his partner’s] intellectual property rights from a legal perspective, they violate the terms of service of the Apple App Store, which has already taken action to remove them accordingly,” said Lucy Marlow, a senior associate atJMW Solicitors.
Apple mayalso rip offdevelopers, but this was a welcome intervention. The lines between imitation and inspiration can be blurry, but cloning a free game for a cash grab is clearly a dick move — whether it’s legal or not.
Story byThomas Macaulay
Thomas is a senior reporter at TNW. He covers European tech, with a focus on AI, cybersecurity, and government policy.Thomas is a senior reporter at TNW. He covers European tech, with a focus on AI, cybersecurity, and government policy.
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