Scrabulous Safe to Return to Facebook?

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Scrabulous Safe to Return to Facebook?

Hasbro has dropped its lawsuit against the Agarwalla family, creators of popular Facebook application Scrabulous.

The infamous suit came about in January 15, 2008 when the makers of Scrabble filed suing the makers of Scrabulous for copyright infringement. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/80602-Hasbro-Attempting-To-Shut-Down-Scrabulous] Soon after, Scrabulous was disabled and the real Scrabble was brought onto Facebook. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/84852-Official-Scrabble-Coming-to-Facebook]

This summer, EA released an official version of Scrabble for North American Facebook users, but groups like "Save Scrabulous" made the community's feelings on the matter pretty clear.

Perhaps because of the negative reaction received, Hasbro has dropped the suit. While Scrabulous may have gained a few points (on a double word space, naturally) from this dropping of charges, it's not over yet.

Mattel, the owner of the trademark outside North America still has a case to put against Scrabulous, and there's no telling if it will move forward with any legal action.

Source : Slashdot [http://games.slashdot.org/games/08/12/17/0656220.shtml]

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[Aardvark Soup]

Why are people defending Scarbulous anyway? It clearly is plain plagiarism and I completely agree with Hasbro sueing them.

 

[ckeymel]

Why are people defending Scarbulous anyway? It clearly is plain plagiarism and I completely agree with Hasbro sueing them.

They probably see it as the big mean corporation tromping on the dreams of the little people.

I'm not sure I agree that Hasbro should sue - assuming that Scrabulous was created for free and distributed as such, and even though it still is illegal, I think they would have done a lot better to follow in popcap's footsteps with the bejeweled thing and just made it an official version instead of yanking it and putting in their own application.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

There's also the point to be made that Scrabulous allowed players of all geographical areas to join in; whilst the split trademark of Mattel/Hasbro blocked some regions from playing.

Scrabulous had a huge following by that point, and Scrabble was 'seen' to be muscling in on already claimed territory.

 

[Galletea]

I'm still mad at Hasbro for generally lowering the quality of Barbie dolls...What?

Anyway it does seem like they're muscling in. The game got them exposure surely. However all the 'save Scrabulous' groups do seem a very silly idea.