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Scrabulous creators sued in United States by Hasbro

By Tim Conneally, BetaNews

July 24, 2008, 4:50 PM

Game maker Hasbro, just weeks after the release of a properly licensed Scrabble Facebook beta, have filed suit against the creators of the unauthorized, and apparently too-popular Scrabulous, asking for removal of the game in addition to unspecified damages.

At the beginning of the year Facebook was contacted about Scrabulous by Hasbro, owner of the game's rights in the United States, asking that it be taken down.

The game, a product of two self-proclaimed Scrabble fans, remained one of the most popular applications on Facebook. It counted over 450,000 users daily, and a group called "Save Scrabulous" with well over 50,000 members.

In a statement, Hasbro said, "We view the Scrabulous application as clear and blatant infringement of our Scrabble intellectual property, and we are pursuing this legal action in accordance with the interests of our shareholders, and the integrity of the Scrabble brand."

Many users feel that Scrabulous is superior to Elecronic Arts' legitimately licensed Scrabble Facebook application, which they say has an inferior dictionary and counts a paltry 8,862 daily users.

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By gregmlr

posted Jul 25, 2008 - 12:16 PM

Well what does Hasbro expect. Mattel created a Facebook version of Scrabble that is available to everyone outside of the United States and Canada, so I say go Scrabulous!

Score: 0

By uberfly

posted Jul 25, 2008 - 12:16 AM

Well, their first and probably biggest mistake was calling it Scrabulous.

Score: 0

By NickKellet

edited Jul 25, 2008 - 12:08 AM

It's funny.

I'm a board game publisher ( http://www.gifttrap.com/ ) and I know lots of independent board game publishers who, like me, would jump at the chance of getting 500k users per day playing and talking about your game even if you didn't own the site that's collecting $25k/month in ad revenue.

Hasbro and Mattel have both benefited from sales increases due to the born again popularity of their cash-cow game. They sell over a million copies a year when really nobody really needs another copy.

Scrabble is a board game that's not turn based. Scrabulous is an online game. There are as many differences as there are similarities. Scrabulous defined the bar for an online word game.

Scrabulous have made the game work online and generated a dedicated crowd.

Now, as a follower, Hasbro with all the fuss has only managed 10k users per day.

Isn't Scrabulous just a better Mouse Trap – they didn’t copy an online version as Scrabble didn’t have one. There are other copies too and I bet they aren’t being sued, simply because they haven’t created the attention or the dedicated crowd.

There are many other "copycat" game apps on Facebook and they aren't getting sued.

I have total respect for the Scrabulous guys. We created a Facebook app in the vein of Free Gifts to help promote our game but getting your social app moving is no mean feat. Translating a board game to an online game is far from obvious.

The Free Gifts apps get 100k daily active users on Facebook, which is pretty cool. Our game precedes Free Gifts, but you can’t fight the viral nature and you’ve got to be first on the right platform.

Check out our app here; http://apps.new.facebook.com/gifttrap/

Unlike the Free Gifts app your friend gets to choose their own gift, the question is will you match. We have turned virtual gifts into a game.

The GiftTRAP board game is on sale in Barnes and Noble right now which is pretty cool (no doubt next to Scrabble). I'm just a few million copies behind them but gaining fast, but then we do have some pretty cool awards to our name.

I hope Facebook doesn't drop Scrabulous. My sense is they will, but it's hard to call.

Adonomics.com currently value Scrabulous at $2.7m so $10 sounds like greed came before the fall.

Score: 0

By mrredsun

posted Jul 24, 2008 - 8:50 PM

Hasbro offered to buy out Scrabulous a few months ago, but its makers were asking for something like $10 million. It's likely cheaper for Hasbro to just enforce their trademark through the legal system than to pay $10 million for an implementation of their property.

Score: 0

By dvferret

posted Jul 24, 2008 - 7:01 PM

Bad Hasbro. I know they can do this but it just looks bad on them.

Score: 0

By paschott

posted Jul 24, 2008 - 5:35 PM

While I feel that Hasbro has the right to do this, I think that the negative PR they are generating through this whole situation will come back to bite them. They would have been better off buying out Scrabulous and just starting there, even if it cost them more money up-front than developing their own version.

Score: 0

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