Hasbo issues sues makers of Scrabulous
Date : 07 24 2008 Category : Technology
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Iain Thomson in San Francisco, vnunet.com, Friday 25 July 2008 at 01:59:00
Tardy legal case pending
Hasbro, which owns the right to the game Scrabble, has filed suit against the creators of the hugely popular Facebook application Scrabulous. The suit named Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla and their company as responsible for theft of intellectual property. The company has already asked Facebook to remove the application, which has over half a million daily users and a fan group of nearly 40,000. Hasbro's own Facebook version of Scrabble by contrast has barely 10,000 users and around 5,000 fans. "Hasbro has an obligation to act appropriately against infringement of our intellectual properties," said Barry Nagler, Hasbro's general counsel, in a statement. "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." What is interesting is the timing of the legal action. Scrabulous has been on Facebook for almost 18 months but legal action has only begun now that there is an official Scrabble application on the social networking site.
