Hasbro, makers of the popular 60-year-old Scrabble board game, has
apparently had
enough of Scrabulous, the popular Facebook application that looks, plays, and
feels its old-school predecessor. The company is now striking back, invoking
the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) to remove Scrabulous from Facebook
and put a lock on the game’s web site and assets.
“We view the Scrabulous application as clear and blatant infringement
of our Scrabble intellectual property, said Hasbro general counsel Barry
Nagler. “We are pursuing this legal action in accordance with the
interests of our shareholders, and the integrity of the Scrabble brand.”
A battle between Hasbro and the India-based Scrabulous owner RJ Softwares,
named after company owners Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla, has loomed for
some time. This is particularly the case since Hasbro
and EA teamed up to create their own, official version of Scrabble for
Facebook users.
The numbers for EA’s Scrabble have, thus far, not fared well. Approximately
8,000 Facebook users play the official application regularly, compared to the
Scrabulous’ half a million -- Scrabulous is said to have around 2.3 million
users total. EA’s Scrabble launched earlier this month, and numbers revealed in
a previous DailyTech report reveal a gain of more than 3,000 active
users in the past two weeks.
“Hasbro has always had the same two priorities,” said Hasbro Digital Media
general manager Mark Blecher in
an interview with the New York Times. “One is to offer a
great playing authentic game for fans and the second is to protect our
intellectual property. This was theft of I.P., plain and simple.”
“It's really no different from when the recording industry faced the issue of
folks posting music on sites like Napster and letting them copy it for free,”
said Blecher, speaking to CNet.
The Agarwalla brothers reportedly make $25,000
a month in advertisements. EA and Hasbro attempted to buy the game outright -- but those talks went nowhere.
Hasbro’s lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, accuses the
brothers of “promoting and profiting from … the confusingly similar
‘Scrabulous’ name.”
While both games maintain an intense following, a “Save Scrabulous” group on
Facebook acknowledges their game’s shortcomings. “The copyright infringement is
obvious and, in retrospect, the developers of Scrabulous should have done more
to create their own spin on it,” said one fan. Both Scrabble and Scrabulous
share identical objectives, board layouts, color schemes, and point values.