Many of us play the daily New York Times games on our devices, but did you know that their Wordle game has copyright protections? According to the linked article, “the New York Times filed several Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices to developers of Wordle-inspired games, saying many of the alleged clones infringe on its copyright protections”, one of which includes a Canadian version called “Canuckle”.
I thought this was such an interesting headline/story because it got me thinking about when a general game idea crosses over into a copyrightable work. For example, is the game of go fish copyright protected? What about sudoku? Games that are made and performed by many because they have been passed around through word of mouth and do not require any copyrighted materials. “Wordle” is essentially just a basic word game with elements from many other word games, so I wonder when it became copyrightable and how far that copyright goes. Can they protect against similar word games that use 6 letters instead of 5? What about if someone makes a hybrid of Wordle/hangman? Let me know your thoughts!
