Oh…this is very bad news:
Facebook has been asked to remove the Scrabulous game from its website by the makers of Scrabble.The Facebook add-on has proved hugely popular on the social network site and regularly racks up more than 500,000 daily users.
Lawyers for toy makers Hasbro and Mattel say Scrabulous infringes their copyright on the board-based word game.
I play an obscene amount of Scrabble online using the Facebook application — and in fact see very limited use for Facebook beyond it. If Scrabulous should suddenly disappear, it would leave a large, tile-shaped hole in my being.
Link via Gerry Canavan, who’s not wrong that Hasbro/Mattel should “offer Facebook the opportunity for a license so they can get a piece of the action.” Like him, I’d always assumed this had already happened.
Yick.
I wasn’t real sure about the licensing. I figured if it was licensed they’d be using the real name, but the rules were so close to the original…
You remind me I need to take my turn.
It’s a little amazing that they thought they could get away with not licensing, or at least clearing the application with Hasbro/Mattel’s lawyers first. Especially since there is revenue being generated, through ad sales.
Despite its slightly different name, Scrabulous is very clearly intended to resemble Scrabble in every other respect. Their FAQ, explaining the rules of the game, simply links to the Wikipedia article on Scrabble. It would be like me creating an online version of Monopoly, identical in almost every way except that I called it “Monopolism.” And I linked back to Parker Brothers. The case against them for trademark infringement seems pretty clear.
Yet I really hope they can reach some kind of settlement and keep the application running.
Horrors!!