"Scrabulous" Knock-off Web Game Removed From Facebook

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on July 29, 2008 - 8:38am.

Los Angeles - "Scrabulous," the popular Web knock-off version of Hasbro's (NYSE: HAS) official "Scrabble" that was recently targeted with a copyright infringement lawsuit, has been removed from the U.S. and Canadian versions of online social network Facebook. "In response to a legal request from Hasbro, the copyright and trademark holder for Scrabble in the U.S. and Canada, the developers of Scrabulous have suspended their application in the U.S. and Canada until further notice," a Facebook representative told CNET News.com.

Hasbro sued the makers of Scrabulous last week, shortly after its Electronic Arts-developed official online Scrabble game became available on Facebook.

The company also sent a cease-and-desist to Facebook, asking the company to remove the game from its sites.

The knock-off game was counting over 500,000 daily active users on Facebook as of last week.

Currently, Scrabulous is still available on overseas versions of Facebook -- where the rights are owned by Mattel, and not Hasbro -- as well as on Scrabulous.com.

http://snipurl.com/378uc (DMW previous coverage)

http://www.scrabulous.com

Published in DMW Daily, July 29, 2008

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Comments

Hasbro torn between lawyers and attention

Submitted by Nick Kellet (not verified) on July 29, 2008 - 9:09am.

I'm an indie board game publisher of GiftTRAP voted "Best Party Game" by Games Magazine and Creative Child Magazine. It's on sale in Barnes & Noble right now. I'd have loved the exposure that Scrabulous got for Hasbro. Hasbro should have too. I can't see 500k users per day migrating to the "official" app. In the meanwhile sales for Scrabble are up so nobody at Hasbro is going to be complaining, but when the novelty passes and their app has less users then who's head will roll? I know how hard it is to get an app moving on Facebook, so I have huge respect for the Scrabulous guys. Check out my app here if you are curious; http://apps.new.facebook.com/gifttrap/ I guess the lawyers had to win, but it's a shame a deal couldn't have been struck.