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Hasbro sues Facebook over Scrabble |
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Written by Felix Da Silva (fdasilva@bitnip.com)
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Wednesday, 16 January 2008 |
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 Toy giants Hasbro and Mattel wrote jointly to Facebook's head office calling for the game Scrabulous, a miniature online form of the popular board game Scrabble, to be pulled due to trademark issues.
According to The Press Association, the Facebook application Scrabulous was
originally developed as an online game by two software developers from India,
Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla.
The game was highly popular and
quickly went on to gain a user base of 485,536 active daily users on Facebook.
Jayant Agarwalla told Fortune, going on to admit that the pair are making over $25,000 per month from advertising on the application.
A statement released by Mattel UK said
Letters have been sent to Facebook in the US regarding the Scrabulous
application. Mattel values its intellectual property and actively protects its brands and
trademarks.
As Mattel owns the rights to the Scrabble trademark outside the US and Canada we
are currently reviewing our position regarding other countries. Hasbro owns the rights to Scrabble in the US and Canada. Mattel owns the
rights elsewhere in the world.
There seems to be no online version of Scrabble from Mattel or Hasbro. As we can see that it does make money and there is an opportunity here.
Perhaps it is because of the deal between Hasbro and EA made with to share each other's intellectual property that is preventing them to pursue this opportunity.
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