Jayant and Rajat Agarwala created a Facebook application called Scrabulous. The application was built around Hasbro game, Scrabble. Hasbro sued the Agarwalas to have the application removed. They removed it and relaunched it as a game called Wordscraper. The Agarwalas only removed the game from the U.S. market. But now the Delhi High Court judge S. Ravindra Bhat ruled that Hasbro can retain their trademark name.
The word Scrabulous cannot be used in any form, including links and source code. So basically the Agarwalas can keep Scrabulous running in India, but only as a different name. Spicy IP India suggests that the brothers rename it to Fabulous.
In March 2008 when Scrabulous was still growing in Facebook, the two brothers were making $25,000 per month. Facebook attempted to play a neutral position regarding the matter, but ended up complying with the decision to have Scrabulous taken down.
Pulse 2.0 commenter, Adam Rinkleff pointed out that Scrabulous has relaunched into a new game called Wordscraper. This news comes one day after the blogosphere reported that Scrabulous, an application created by Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Aggarwalla, was shut-down.
Below is the description of the new game:
Welcome to Wordscraper. It’s the only game on Facebook that allows you to play the game the way you want to! With Wordscraper you can build your own board and try out whacky combinations with special high value squares.
The game is turn based, so you need not be online for very long periods. Plus, we also give you the option to store a board layout. This saves time when you want to play new games with the same layout.
So give it a try, you will love it. Don’t follow rules, make them!
The new game already has close to 200 daily active users. What will EA and Hasbro do about this game? Hopefully nothing.
Hasbro, Inc. (NYSE:HAS) has beaten Scrabulous in a game of copyright takedown. Scrabulous was the first Scrabble game on Facebook. Then Hasbro created their own Scrabble application on Facebook and sued the founders of Scrabulous, Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Aggarwalla. Hasbro told Facebook to remove Scrabulous under copyright law within the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Scrabulous took themselves down in compliance with the lawsuit:
“Scrabulous is disabled for U.S. and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like to stay informed about developments in this matter, please click here.” The Scrabulous application is available on Facebook outside of North America. Scrabulous still seems to be working on Scrabulous.com.
Facebook spokesman, David Swain stated that the social networking company is not taking sides between the Hasbro and Scrabulous dispute. “We’re trying to maintain just being a neutral platform.”
Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:ERTS) created the Scrabble application for Hasbro.
