Will the ax fall on Scrabulous?
July 27th, 2008 | by jz | Published in Facebook, Future of the Internet, Generativity, Web 2.0 platforms | 2 Comments
In 2006, two guys from India came up with Scrabulous, a Scrabble-like game that took off only after it was transformed from a standalone Web site into a Facebook app. Hasbro, holder of the Scrabble trademark in North America, noticed, as did Mattel, holder of rights elsewhere, and asked them to take it down. They refused, and in January ’08 the rights holders approached Facebook to kill the app. Facebook hedged, and there’s been an uneasy peace until now.
Last week Hasbro introduced its own Scrabble version for Facebook, and Josh Quittner reports that Hasbro is now suing the Scrabulous makers — and is leaning on Facebook once again to kill the competing app. Note that it’s an open question whether Scrabulous is infringing anyone else’s rights — my own take is that if it is, it’s in the name alone, and that by calling it “rainbows and buttercups” instead of “Scrabulous” there’d be little claim of brand confusion. (A residual claim that the Scrabulous game board infringes the copyright held in the Scrabble game board could be addressed by making it so that players can lay out the board however they choose — just like I could build my own Scrabble board at home and have a fair use defense to a claim of infringement.)
But Facebook may not want to be stuck in the middle, and under a threat of a lawsuit itself might decide to simply kill the app. Bill Gates never had to face this dilemma: Windows was loosely enough coupled to its apps that no one ever thought to demand that Microsoft kill undesirable or illegal apps running on its platform. (This remains so even as the Windows update service offers a monthly “malicious software removal tool” that could presumably target anything …) Stay tuned.
–JZ
July 28th, 2008 at 9:00 am (#)
While it would have been nice for Scrabulous to have named itself “rainbows and buttercups” or to have created an application that operated within the bounds of fair use, that is not what happened in this case. Scrabulous purposefully set itself up to look and feel like Scrabble, and by doing so gained a following of users. I am all for supporting generative technologies, but when that technology violates intellectual property laws it seems completely understandable to use legal and non-legal means to protect your interest.
True, it is unfortunate that Facebook is able to kill the app so readily, but their unwillingness to do so shows one of the safeguards of non-generative technologies. Facebook knows that there are hundreds of thousands of users using the Scrabulous application, and they know that if they kill the app, it isn’t Hasbro that is going to get the brunt of users’ attacks. Users are going to complain directly to Facebook.
I appreciate your concerns in general, but in this case it seems that users desire to use Scrabulous will force Hasbro to pursue its case in the courts, which is just where they should be pursuing it. If the courts find that Scrabulous has in fact violated Hasbro’s intellectual property rights, Scrabulous should be removed—as I’m sure it will be.
July 28th, 2008 at 9:47 am (#)
I publish a board game GiftTRAP ( http://www.gifttrap.com/ ) and I’d be happy if someone was creating half a million conversations about my brand every day.
Hasbro and Mattel have benefited from sales increases due to the born again popularity of their cash-cow game. They sell over a million copies a year when really nobody really needs another copy.
I’m sure word games are seeing a resurgence. I know Bananagrams is selling well in stores and they are about to release a Facebook app, no doubt to try and grab a bunch of Scrabulous users.
Creating a loyal following like Scrabulous is an impressive achievement, I have total respect for the Scrabulous guys.
We created a Facebook app in the vein of Free Gifts to help promote our game but getting your social app moving is no mean feat. Translating a board game to an online game is far from obvious.
The Free Gifts apps get 100k daily active users on Facebook, which is pretty cool. Our board game precedes the whole virtual gift tend, but it’s all about timing and reach.
Check out our app here; http://apps.new.facebook.com/gifttrap/
Unlike the Free Gifts app your friend gets to choose their own gift, the question is will you match. We have turned virtual gifts into a game a bit like Secret Santa.
The GiftTRAP board game is on sale in Barnes and Noble right now which is pretty cool (no doubt next to Scrabble and Bananagrams).
I hope Facebook doesn’t drop Scrabulous. My sense is they will, but it’s hard to call.
It will be interesting to see what people do over time.
Stuff that takes off on the web seems to have an edge to it and a legal copy of Scrabble might not have that. The whole thing could have peaked, but I’m guessing not.