The companies that make the board game Scrabble are trying to shut down Scrabulous, an online version that is one of the most popular applications on the social networking site Facebook.
Hasbro Inc., which owns the rights to the crossword game in the United States and Canada, and Mattel Inc., which owns the rights elsewhere, believe the online game, developed in India, infringes on their copyrights and trademarks.
Scrabulous listed more than 600,000 daily active users on Facebook as of Wednesday and is one of the 10 most used applications on the site. People can also play at Scrabulous.com…
The game was developed by brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, from Calcutta, India, who say on the Web site that they created it after they could not find an online version of Scrabble that they liked.
Uh, wonder who will win?
Someone with an “I” and an “X” could kick some serious ass by playing “IBEX” in the lower left corner. Sadly, “X” was already played in “MAXI” in the upper right.
At least they didn’t try Scrabulous R’ Us.
I play Scrabulous a lot and if it goes away I will have 6 extra hours in my day to do something productive. WAAAAAHHH!!!
#1–Nice call. Whoever placed “BE” exposed the high point depending on what the board development was.
“ABET” would get some points rather than turn those letters back in.
“Uh, wonder who will win?”
Duh, the one who can afford the best lawyers and delay the trial long enough until the other one can’t afford to pay their lawyers’s fee.
Dear Hasbro. Pay these guys a million bucks for saving you all the time and effort to make this thing. They only make $25,000 per month from the ads. Best million they will ever spend.
You can’t suggest words that can’t be played people!! Besides.. look at his tile holder… he’s got ultra crappy letters. Best move I can see is gooD/Hud… if hud is a word. 13pts.
It’s purely a business decision.
Cheaper to sue them than to buy them.
From a publicity standpoint, where all publicity is good publicity, you get more with suing.
So it’s win-win for Hasbro.
Now let’s see them suing the makers of the FLASH game Hungry Hungry Hyppo !
Does anyone know how long the game of scrabble can be owned by anyone? This game was developed in the 1930’s.
Likewise, just what is it that is owned? Trademarks and copyrights should expire in a few decades and are easily avoided.
Hasbro should thank their lucky stars the Scrabulous people brought this old game back into the mainstream. I started playing an online game with my kids in November. We all had so much fun, I bought everyone Scrabble games for Christmas and we played throughout the Christmas break. Our family alone bought four board games and one software game. I hadn’t played Scrabble for at least 20 years prior to discovering Scrabulous on Facebook.
Hasbro, buy them or work out some licensing agreement, but don’t shoot yourselves in the foot and sue them.
good luck on making money hasbro – in this online version its highly unlikely that you will get poisoned by shoddy chinese manufacturing – the same cannot be said for ALL of the rest of your toys
H
A
S U C K S
B
R
O
My father is a serious Scrabble and Scrabulous player. He emailed me encouraging everyone sign an online petition.
As Dad points out, this has helped revive a lot of interest in Scrabble too.
oopps, the link is
The petition. is at
http://www.petitiononline.com/1927612/petition.html
Only a company like Hasbro would try to sue people for making an online social version of one of America’s greatest pastimes. Come on, Hasbro, you should know that nobody can own a game like Scrabble. Long live Scrabulous!