Hasbro Drops Scrabulous Lawsuit

According to an Associated Press report, Hasbro has decided to drop a lawsuit that it used to bully two Indian programmers earlier this year. Good for them.

Hasbro, which owns the rights to the classic word board game Scrabble (America’s good time game), sued the company over its copycat Facebook application Scrabulous. The lawsuit forced the programming duo (two brothers from Calcutta, India named Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla) who do business under the name RJ Softwares to take the application down, citing copyright infringement.

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Scrabulous Returns as Wordscraper

While the game known as Scrabulous is officially dead, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla have not given up on providing Facebook users with a decent word-smithing game. In less than 48 hours - after Scrabulous was pulled from Facebook at the request of Hasbro - the game has been relaunched under a new name (Wordscraper), with some visual changes and new rules that set it aprt from EA’s officially licensed Facebook Scrabble game. While the volume of traffic that Scrabulous enjoyed on Facebook has not materialized for Wordscraper, one would expect that — once word gets out — the game will once again see some serious traffic.

One thing is certain; the brothers Agarwalla had planned to relaunch the game under a different name to avoid any conflicts with Hasbro and EA - evident in how rapidly Wordscraper has been deployed onto Facebook after Scrabulous was taken down.

Source: mashable.com.

Hasbro Sues Scrabulous Developers

Oh Hasbro, you’re so mean. Instead of sitting down with the creators of the Facebook application Scrabulous, you decide to make an example of them. Whether or not Scrabulous is homage to Hasbro’s popular game or blatant copyright infringement (honestly its a little of both), it stands to reason that a Scrabble-like game is already in place and two talented developers who already have their feet wet in the space might be better as allies (or even better employees) than adversaries. But enemies of the Hasbro state these men are as of this week.

Hasbro is making an example of them. Meanwhile thousands of Scrabulous players are pissed off. Will they forget in a few months and suddenly settle for EA’s version of the popular game? Some will admittedly, but some will forget about playing the popular word-smithing game and move on. You can read about all these antics in this Business Week story, but it is obvious that Hasbro is putting a high scoring word on the board to teach these fan developers a lesson: L-A-W-S-U-I-T.

EA’s Scrabble Game For Facebook, Pogo

Remember when EA told the makers of Scrabulous, that free Scrabble-like game on Facebook, to go pound salt? Well no worries, because now EA, the anointed license holder of all things Hasbro, now has a Scrabble game of its own. Can you guess where it will be available?

That’s right, a brand new Scrabble game is in town and this time it’s the real deal.. or something. The game will be available later this month on Facebook as well as Pogo.com. Many more Hasbro game properties are in development and slated to launch
on social networking sites later this year.

Scrabble on Facebook offers the word crafting gameplay of the original along with built in chat, “dynamic animations,” and customizable difficulties.

Login to Facebook and have at it I guess..

So long, Scrabulous?

Will Scrabulous be yanked from Facebook soon? If Mattel and Hasbro have their way, yes. Lawyers for toy makers Hasbro and Mattel have asked the popular social network to remove the game on the grounds that it infringes on their copyrighted game, Scrabble. Hasbro holds the North American rights to the popular word-crafting board game, while Mattel holds the rights in the rest of the world. Electronic Arts is the game licensor of many Hasbro’’s board and family games, including Scrabble.

One of Facebook’’s most popular add-in applications, Scrabulous is played by over nearly 600,000 users daily, according to the game’’s official site. The add-in application, which can be played without leaving the confines of the social network, was created by two Calcutta-based programmers — Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla.

To say Scrabulous is popular among Facebook users would be a gross understatement. There is a whole segment of the site’’s userbase that logs in just to play the game. And not all Facebook users are sitting on their hands while Hasbro and Mattel try to shut down their favorite online diversion. A new Facebook group has been launched called Save Scrabulous that already has hundreds of members sounding off about what they call the best application on Facebook.

In the end, the consensus among users is that this game actually encourages players to purchase the board game. But the real question for Facebook and the game’’s developers is: Does it infringe on someone else’’s copyrights and trademarks?