In July, toymaker Hasbro, which owns the rights to the venerable board game Scrabble, filed suit against the publishers of Scrabulous, a Scrabble knockoff accessible via Facebook.
Scrabulous disappeared immediately, thanks to a DMCA take-down order, and EA quickly launched an officially-licensed Scrabble version on the popular social networking site.
The Associated Press is now reporting that Hasbro has dropped its lawsuit against Calcutta-based Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla, the brothers who created Scrabulous. From the AP story:
Court documents did not specify a reason for the withdrawal of the case.
RJ Softwares, the Agarwalla brothers' company, said in a statement that it has agreed not to use the term "Scrabulous" and has made changes to different versions of the game it created after the lawsuit was filed...
"The agreement provides people in the U.S. and Canada with a choice of different games and also avoids potentially lengthy and costly litigations," the statement said.
Comments
Re: Hasbro D-R-O-P-S Facebook Scrabulous Lawsuit
I can just imagine the conversation that took place.
Hasbro Suit: So, how goes our current lawsuits against nonthreatening things?
Lawyer 1: We have successfully used the DMCA to remove Scrabulous from Facebook.
Lawyer 2: Yes.. however
Lawyer 1: Shut up, Steve!
Hasbro Suit: However?
Lawyer 2: Well, you see... they circumvented the lawsuit by changing the name of their application and now that makes it much harder for us to press the issue.
Lawyer 1: Regardless, we are pushing ahead for a cut of the profits.
Hasbro Suit: Just what ARE the profits?
Lawyer 2: Absolutely nothing sir. It was a free app.
Hasbro Suit: So this games existance could effect us in some way. Right?
Lawyer 1: Absolutely. It interferes with our PC software release of Scrabble Unlimited and it's offer of online play.
Lawyer 2: But those online servers went down a year ago...
Hasbro Suit: So no money, no competeing product, and they are defendable by a name change. Is the sole purpose of this lawsuit just to make us look like assholes?
Lawyer 1: Assholes protecting our Internet Millions, sir.
Hasbro Suit: Drop the suit.
Lawyer 2: At last I can see my wife and kids again....
Lawyer 1: I had them sold to somalian pirates in exchange for safe shipping routes for Monopoly Diamond Deluxe Butter Nougat Edition... sorry.
Wall of Text Simulation- Insert coin to continue.
Re: Hasbro D-R-O-P-S Facebook Scrabulous Lawsuit
That's funny man, really funny.
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Re: Hasbro D-R-O-P-S Facebook Scrabulous Lawsuit
i never played it, did they make any changes to board design or gameplay? I can understand why they'd wanna make it but if they basically recreated scrabble rule by rule you also have to understand why hasbro would sue. They should have just tried to talk to them first before throwing lawsuits down though.
I hate the DMCA though, what a bullshit law. anyone remember how someone later proved a sharpie was in violation because it could be used to circumvent the audio CD protection used to prevent CD-ROMs from reading and ripping an audio CD?
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Re: Hasbro D-R-O-P-S Facebook Scrabulous Lawsuit
it was a BS suit to begin with, though these guys should have been more creative and actually make some essential changes in gameplay. It really isnt that hard.
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Re: Hasbro D-R-O-P-S Facebook Scrabulous Lawsuit
The suit had to do with using the trademark, and since Hasbro wants to avoid many Scrabble knockoffs using the scrabble name (rather than doing variations to the name and board such as Literati), they have to persue anyone using their trademark.
It's also not that hard to choose the name "Wordscraper" over "Scrabulous", aside from having to spend time thinking.