Welcome to America, the land of copyright lawsuits and Facebook applications.
On Wednesday, Associated Press reported that Hasbro Inc. is seeking to have Scrabulous—a online game similar to its own popular crossword board game Scrabble— removed from the myriad selection of Facebook applications.
Scrabulous, which has become “one of the most popular applications on the social networking site Facebook,” provides more than 600,000 users with the chance to challenge their friends to virtual crossword battles. The application was created in India by Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, brothers who live in Calcutta, India. The article indicated that “they created [Scrabulous] after they could not find an online version of Scrabble that they liked.”
Unfortunately, Hasbro contends that Scrabulous resembles its own Scrabble game a bit too much, and furthermore, that it illegally infringes upon its copyrights and trademarks.
In the U.S. and Canada, Hasbro is in legal possession of all rights pertaining to Scrabble; in all other locations, AP comments, leading toy company Mattel Inc. owns said rights. AP reported that the two toy manufacturers filed “cease-and-desist” warnings to four parties they believed were involved in the “development, hosting and marketing of Scrabulous.” The parties were not specifically identified but the manufacturers are ideally searching for an “amicable solution.”
Still, immediacy is a top concern, as Hasbro stated, “If we cannot come to one quickly, we will be forced to close down the site and its associated distribution points.”
As of last Wednesday, Scrabulous became one of the top ten most popular game applications on Facebook, providing more than 600,000 Facebook members with the service for free when they download the application. The crossword game is also available for free play at Scrabulous.com.
Co-developer Jayant Agarwalla as well as Facebook refused to comment on the state of the complaint or any plans of action they will take to concerning the removal of the application.
AP mentioned that displeased Facebookers wielding their social networking expertise created a “Save Scrabulous” group, “[urging] others to lodge protests with the companies by posting Web links to the Hasbro and Mattel sites.”
Any savvy Facebook user will tell you that strength in numbers combined with the instant-gratification (and instant information distribution) of the Internet always gets attention, even if the outcome isn’t always favorable. Let& 39;s see how much of an influence this group will have on the legal results.
For now, Hasbro continues to plead with protesters to begin playing Scrabble on legally registered websites. “…Scrabulous is an illegally copied online version of the world& 39;s most popular word game,” Hasbro wrote in a letter distributed to protesters. Only time will tell whether the application is affected by the complaint— until then, get your Facebook lexicon fix while you can.
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