“C-E-A-S-E” and “D-E-S-I-S-T” aren’t particularly high-scoring Scrabble words — just 7 points each — but in the real world they carry some clout.
Last week, game companies Hasbro and Mattel, who own the rights to the venerable board game Scrabble, sent legal notices to Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla, the developers of an online version of the game called “Scrabulous.” The corporations believe Scrabulous violates their copyrights and want the game taken down.
“We are not surprised that fans have thoroughly enjoyed playing Scrabulous on Facebook.com,” Hasbro and Mattel wrote. “What consumers may not realize, however, is that Scrabulous is an illegally copied online version of the world’s most popular word game.”
There’s little question about the similarities between the two games. Both use letter tiles with numerical values and a game board with squares containing bonus values. The rules and colors used by Scrabulous are identical to the board version. If the Agarwallas had simply printed a copy of Scrabulous and sold it as a board game, there would be little controversy about whether it constitutes a copyright violation.
But in the age of the Internet, as Hasbro and Mattel are discovering, the legal principles may be the same, but the public-relations challenges are far different.
Last June, the Agarwallas created a version of Scrabulous that can be embedded as a Facebook application. In just six months, Scrabbulous has become one of Facebook’s 10 most popular apps, with an estimated two million people playing it each day. The application’s elegant simplicity and compelling game play have given rise to a number of Facebook groups that sound more like advertisements for 12-step programs: “Help I cannot stop playing Scrabulous!,” “Scrabulous Is Crack and I am a Junkie,” and “Scrabulous Anonymous (well, until you join!).”
Hasbro and Mattel, however, are not amused, and…