Hasbro walks away from crossword crossfire

You may recall back in 2007 when popular social network Facebook opened up its platform to third-party developers. The developers instantly introduced their games and applications to the Facebook community, and in effect made Facebook even more socially dynamic.

One such game was Scrabulous, an interactive crossword puzzle game. It quickly became "one of the most popular applications on the social networking site Facebook," providing 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; the Calcutta-based brothers claimed "they created [Scrabulous] after they could not find an online version of Scrabble that they liked." A lot of trademark muss and fuss cropped up thanks to Hasbro, the manufacturer of the actual Scrabble board game.

Hasbro claimed that Scrabulous was an unlawful rip off and requested that Facebook remove the program from its inventory. Surrendering to the higher, corporate power, Scrabulous was revamped and reintroduced to the Facebook platform as "Wordscraper" this past August. Still, the lawsuit lurked in the background, until now.

On Monday, the Associated Press reported that after quite the lexicon-based controversy, Hasbro officially dropped the lawsuit against the Agarwalla brothers this past Friday. Mysteriously, as the AP maintained, the documentation filed with New York's U.S. District Court did not cite a specific explanation for the case abandonment.

It appears, however, that after recognizing the copyright complaints from Hasbro, changing its name from Scrabulous to Wordscraper, and revamping its game rules, Hasbro "agreed to withdraw the lawsuit."
The Agarwalla brothers contend that the outcome is more or less ideal; it increases diversity among crossword Facebook games, giving users more options for game play, and also sidesteps the expensive formalities that often accompany lawsuits.

So it seems for now that this matter is settled, though no official comments have been released from either Hasbro of the developers of the original Scrabulous. Until then, you can keep those big brains active with SCRABBLE by Electronic Arts or Wordscraper by the Agarwalla brothers. Happy spelling!