Scrabulous Sued by Scrabble ("Infringe" Is a Real Word)

by Jordan Yerman | January 12, 2008 at 08:53 am
2045 views | 2 Recommendations | 6 comments

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Scrabulous in action

Scrabulous in action

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uploaded by Jordan Yerman

NOT
    R
  SURPRISED
    L
    Y

It was only a matter of time before super-popular office productivity killer, Scrabulous, was sued by Hasbro for infringing upon the Scrabble trademark. A shutdown notice was sent two weeks ago, although, as of right now, Scrabulous is still operational (hurry up and finish up your games). Founded in 2006 as a standalone website by two Indian brothers, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, Scrabulous' growth accelerated significantly when it launched as an application for Facebook. As the 9th most popular application on Facebook, Scrabulous boasts over 2.3 million active users with over 500,000 of them active daily. While Hasbro does indeed have a strong legal case against the Agarwalla brothers, they are missing out on a key opportunity by pursuing this litigious route. Although Hasbro recently licensed the digital rights of its games to EA, no online version of Scrabble exists right now. So, by shutting down Scrabulous, Hasbro would be angering 2.3 million of Scrabble's biggest fans. Instead, why not hammer out a compromise and turn this into a win-win-win situation?
Now pardon me whilst I finish my games...
This word-game fan agrees with Techdirt on this one: Habro is missing out on a huge opportunity here, as Scrabulous is one of Facebooks more popular apps.

recommend This comment thread is now closed
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chung sungwoo

So we cannot play Scrabulous on Facebook any more?


no good. as you said they need win-win situation.

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Jordan Yerman

As of 10:02am (EST), Scrabulous is still working. I checked on it especially for this article... I do it all for you!

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Martha Jones

It'd be good if the two sides could do a deal. I'll be sad not to be able to play Scrabulous any more, if not.

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Swan

I'd never even heard of the game until now!  Pardon me while I crawl back under my rock ....
          ~ Swan

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Jordan Yerman

Nah, I bet you're playing Scrabulous right this second...

Lee Lecu
Lee Lecu
flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 16:50 on July 29th, 2008

jordan, I like this story. It's good stuff.

This story was created over 3 months ago, the comment thread is now closed.

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