A Death Knell For Scrabulous Worldwide
New York – Hardly a month ago, one of the most popular Scrabble clone already blocked from Facebook in the United States and Canada, “Scrabulous” — has now been yanked in all other countries except India in response to a copyright tussle over the game.
Facebook said Monday it was forced to block access to Scrabulous throughout most of the world in response to a formal request to do so from Mattel Inc., which owns the rights to Scrabble outside North American.
Obsessive players who while away hours at work by playing Scrabble ‘rip-off’ Scrabulous face disappointment when they log on at the office today. The online game, which is played by about 600,000 people on the social networking site, has been removed after a series of legal threats.
The unofficial web version of Scrabble, which is popular with Facebook users, first ran into trouble in January when US game company Hasbro began pressuring the social networking website to remove the application.
North American users lost access to Scrabulous in July, after Hasbro filed a lawsuit –- however users in the rest of the world were still able to play the game.
Now Scrabulous has been pulled in the UK and Australia following a “take down notice” sent to Facebook from Mattel. Hasbro owns Scrabble in the U.S. and Canada, but in the rest of the world, it is owned by a subsidiary of Mattel. This would explain why Scrabuluous has been available in other countries until now.
Mattel and Hasbro; the gaming giants who own the worldwide rights to Scrabble, have accused the two Indian brothers behind Scrabulous of breaching their copyright.
“I’m really annoyed about this,” said regular player Catherine Saunders, 30, from north London.
“Scrabulous was by far the best thing about Facebook. I’m sure it cannot be damaging sales of the board game — quite the reverse, in fact.”
Scrabulous’ developers — Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla of Calcutta — removed the game from Facebook in North America three weeks ago, in response to a federal suit filed in New York by Hasbro, which owns rights to Scrabble in the U.S. and Canada.
However, in place of Scrabulous, the brothers then posted a new game on Facebook called Wordscraper, which uses circles instead of Scrabble-like square tiles. Some Facebook aficionados initially grumbled that Wordscraper was not as good as Scrabulous. But a Facebook spokesperson said the company does not provide information on the popularity of applications developed by others for the site.
But the Scrabulous application remains available in India, where its developers live and where Mattel has filed a lawsuit claiming violations of intellectual property. Facebook is not blocking Scrabulous there for now, considering the question of ownership still a matter for Indian courts to resolve.
In deciding to block Scrabulous on Friday, Facebook risked antagonizing a community of software developers it has been trying to nurture and promote. But had it done nothing, it could have faced liability for copyright and trademark infringement.
Now Scrabulous appears to have taken its final breath, as access to the application has been blocked for users in Australia and the UK as well.
Developer Jayant Agarwalla, who created the game with his brother Rajat, said Facebook had decided to block access to Scrabulous last weekend due to legal action from Mattel.
“Sometime on 22nd August, Facebook took the unfortunate decision to restrict most users from accessing Scrabulous. This was in response to Mattel sending them a “take down notice” on 14th August,” he said in a statement reprinted on the Inside Facebook blog.
“It is even more astonishing that Facebook, which claims to be a fair and neutral party, took this step even though they were fully aware of the circumstances under which the Mattel letter was sent to them,” Agarwalla said.
“We now await the decision of the (Honourable) High Court and shall accordingly decide our future course of action with regard to Scrabulous.”
Both Hasbro and Mattel have been trying to promote an authorized version of Scrabble for Facebook — made by Electronic Arts Inc. in the United States and Canada and by RealNetworks Inc. elsewhere.
Facebook executives had no comment on the e-mail and Mattel officials could not be reached for comment.