Loading
-
FaceBook may Remove "Scrabulous"
Techtree News Staff, Jan 22, 2008 1359 hrs ISTAccording to Hasbro and Mattel, "Scrabulous" violates the copyrights on "Scrabble", whose ownership rights are shared by the two companies.
If you're an avid player of "Scrabulous", the online word game application on popular social networking Web site, "Facebook", you may soon have to give it up following the legal rights issues it has raised.
"Scrabulous" closely resembles the classic 70-year old board-game, "Scrabble". According to Hasbro and Mattel, "Scrabulous" violates the copyrights on "Scrabble", whose ownership rights are shared by the two companies.
Hasbro holds copyrights of "Scrabble" in the US and Canada, while JW Spear and Sons, a UK-based unit of Mattel, owns the intellectual property rights in the rest of the world.
No surprise then that Hasbro and Mattel want Facebook to remove "Scrabulous" from their Web site, a game which has no affiliation with the both of them.
"Scrabulous", which attracts close to 600,000 players everyday, was created last year by Kolkata-based brothers, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, who are in their 20s. The game first took off with another name, and became popular only after it featured on Facebook a couple of months ago.
Facebook was asked to eliminate "Scrabulous" from their Web site after Scrabble's copyright owners became aware of the growing popularity of the online game, and also that it generates a cool monthly $25,000 (approx) for its owners.
While there is no comment yet from Facebook and the owners of "Scrabulous", they haven't ceased adding new members and continuing to offer the game on the Web.
"Scrabulous" ranks number 10 on Facebook, and has generated "Save Scrabulous" groups on several Blogging communities to prevent its closure. Facebook alone features several such groups, where the largest one has over 9,000 members.
"Scrabulous" closely resembles the classic 70-year old board-game, "Scrabble". According to Hasbro and Mattel, "Scrabulous" violates the copyrights on "Scrabble", whose ownership rights are shared by the two companies.
Hasbro holds copyrights of "Scrabble" in the US and Canada, while JW Spear and Sons, a UK-based unit of Mattel, owns the intellectual property rights in the rest of the world.
No surprise then that Hasbro and Mattel want Facebook to remove "Scrabulous" from their Web site, a game which has no affiliation with the both of them.
"Scrabulous", which attracts close to 600,000 players everyday, was created last year by Kolkata-based brothers, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, who are in their 20s. The game first took off with another name, and became popular only after it featured on Facebook a couple of months ago.
Facebook was asked to eliminate "Scrabulous" from their Web site after Scrabble's copyright owners became aware of the growing popularity of the online game, and also that it generates a cool monthly $25,000 (approx) for its owners.
While there is no comment yet from Facebook and the owners of "Scrabulous", they haven't ceased adding new members and continuing to offer the game on the Web.
"Scrabulous" ranks number 10 on Facebook, and has generated "Save Scrabulous" groups on several Blogging communities to prevent its closure. Facebook alone features several such groups, where the largest one has over 9,000 members.
Related Links
Tag keywords
Discussion Board
(2) Comments
Patti Phillips
,Oro Station, on Jan 26, 2008 02:12 AM
Report abuse
Opinion Poll
- Which desktop web browser do you use?
-
Internet Explorer
Firefox
Chrome
Safari
Opera
Other (specify in comments)
Poll Results View Previous Polls