Friday, July 25, 2008

Scrabble and scrabulous...

So, Hasbro (which is the parent or company that owns Scrabble in the USA) has filed a lawsuit against Scrabulous and sent notice to Facebook that the game be removed from Facebook.

Now, just some background info - Scrabulous is a Facebook App version of the famous game, Scrabble, and was started by 2 brothers in India (Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla). This application quickly rocketed to popularity with more than 500,000 people - read article here on MyADSL.

So now we have a Facebook App that has been made in India and is earning the 2 brothers some money from the ads been displayed and Hasbro in the USA wants it off. Hasbro has filed a lawsuit against it but as the brothers are in India something can only be done if the Indian courts agree/work with the US Courts.

This is bringing up quite an important issue here - international copyrights and the global market that is been created by the internet. Do I agree that the App should be removed, no I don't but they do need to work something out with Hasbro.

Facebook has indicated that they don't want to get involved or be dragged into it, they said they have notified Scrabulous of the problem and hope to rectify it. The Indian brothers have said that they expect their fans to remain loyal to the App. This also comes a week after the big games giant, EA, released a new Facebook App with Hasbro's permission of a free online Scrabble game.

We'll wait and see what happens.

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