Electronic Arts is publishing an authorized version of Scrabble for US and Canadian users of Facebook. It will compete head-to-head against the popular Indian knockoff Scrabulous, which has become a popular pastime on the social networking site.
The developers of Scrabulous, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, may face multiple lawsuits by Hasbro and Mattel, the companies that purchased the rights to Scrabble.
The brothers contend that they are not copying Scrabble — they are merely adapting ideas for a new game. Fair use is a weak argument, as Scrabble has been sold under license in India for several decades. Scrabble is also protected under multiple patents and copyrights around the world. Scrabulous uses the same number of tiles found in Scrabble, along with identical point values, and an identical game board.
The brothers admitted in this New York times article, Online Scrabble Craze Leaves Game Sellers at Loss for Words, that they are earning at least US$25,000 in dvertising revenue from their Facebook game. Here’s a link to the Wikipedia article.
Mattel licensed its own Facebook version of Scrabble in March 2008, but the Facebook app provided by RealNetworks cannot be played by US and Canadian Facebook users. It’s trivial for Facebook to identify these users, either by IP addresses or user profiles. Hasbro owns the Scrabble license for the US and Canada, and has licensed the EA version for Facebook. Both Mattel and Hasbro considered a settlement with the brothers, but the idea was abandoned for fear of creating a precedent.
See this Associated Press story, Facebook could see a standoff over Scrabble, for more details.
Image courtesy of allyrose18 through a Creative Commons license.
