The Obvious answer here lies in the desire for a cheap dollar, but the rights to a 20 year old game, and enjoy the benifits from a 70 license on it and all the modern clones, however as stated before the IP laws do not cover ideas & themes, However what is quering me is why to bother, They obviously sought legal advice before doing any major purchases, and specially on a scheme like this - i suspect now that they will regret it, 20-30 million dollars regret it, Hasbro Interactive was sold for one reason only - the next holders going to be enjoying possible bankruptcy - simply as the company was failing to turn profit, and debts are stacking - sell it to some sorry indervidual who couldnt tell one side of the contract from the other. - So what confuses me is why sacfifice potential profit from HasbroInteractive? What lies at the heart of this case is $$$, they probably are seeking it to re-inberse them for losses on Lack of Sales. A Quick ploy, and they probably intended to just get the companies to settle, no harm done. But then someone has to fight - and congradulations for them, becuase they are stopping an evil plan - but on the same note , they will be fighting odds of laywers who have price tags with several zeros on the end of a big 10k. So in a word, F*CK u. And F*CK the system that let this get past a joke. -Gwala "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither youself nor your enemy you will succumb in every battle. Knowing the enemy enables you to make the offensive, knowing yourself enables you to stand on the defensive" - Sun Tzu, Chapter 5 - Know the enemy, know yourself

Hasbro lost $53 million last year and $85 this year.

Did they REALLY think they''d recover these loses from the few small developers they sued? If the small developers had millions of dollars, they''d wouldn''t be small developers.

Sorry, but I just feel like saying "DUH!!".

But Infogrames paid $100 millons for hasbro interactive, the idea of hasbro was just kick everybody from the market of ''old'' games so games.com could be the only one, I read that they had 4 millon visitors but I''m not sure in which period, anyway the site was suposed to start in early Jan 2001 and it already started and I even saw advertisings, I took a look at the site and it was soooooooooo pathetic.
But imagine that you own the ''copyright'' of the music notes, therefore having exclusive rights about making music, and anyone else who makes music can be sued, you could just make any crap and you would get a lot of money since it''s the only alternative, they took too seriously ''their'' Monopoly game.