Tag Archives: games

Scrabulous sued by Scrabble owner Hasbro over their Facebook game…

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This was on the cards but is now official. The Indian creators of the popular Facebook application Scrabulous have been sued by Hasbro, the US based company that owns copyright over Scrabble. Check out reports here, here & here. The suit has been filed against RJ Softwares, the Kolkata based software development company owned by Rajat Agarwalla & Jayant Agarwalla, who together created the game. Hasbro is apparently seeking damages from RJ and asking them to stop using the name ‘Scrabulous’ for their game. Not just that, they have also sent a copyright notice to Facebook under the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) saying that it infringes the company’s intellectual property and asked them to remove Scrabulous from its site, which Facebook has refused.

Hasbro incidentally now has its own version of Scrabble on Facebook and that has 8K users compared to over two million for Scrabulous.

Its not going to be easy for the Indian team to fight the lawsuit since it is filed in New York, while they are based in India. Apparently some talks had happened between the two parties over a possible partnership (or acquisition) but that did not materialise. Facebook’s position is precarious as well. Under the Safe harbour provisions the DMCA, they are bound to take down the application failing which they could be dragged into a bigger litigation.

While I’m not an expert on this topic, I do have a working knowledge of DMCA. I think the use of the title “Scrabulous’ might have been a mistake by the Indian team and it might prove crucial in this case. The standard procedure adopted by internet companies in DMCA infringements is to either take down the disputed content straightaway if they think it violates IPR, or suspend it temporarily till a decision has been reached.

Question to Indian readers- without being jingoistic, whats your opinion on this issue?

Navajo… word based Facebook MOG you should not miss

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I haven’t previously covered newly launched Facebook applications since there are just so many of them. But when you see something promising and innovative, why not? Navajo is a word based multiplayer game on the Facebook platform that you should check out. Built by an Indian startup, they are hoping to replicate the success of Scrabulous (built by another Indian team). The game is similar to the jumbled words puzzle that we see everyday in our daily newspapers. Except that you are playing in real time, synchronous mode in an interface that is just like your regular IM. The system throws jumbled works at the players inside a Navajo room, who have to take cracks at rearranging the letters to come up with the real word. You can have public rooms (open to all Navajo players, with a limit of 10 per room), network rooms (open to all people in your network) and private rooms (where you can play privately with friends). A useful extension of this concept is specialised rooms that one can have for exams like GRE, MCAT etc. The game currently has 1k users but its growing fast.

Future plans include porting this to OpenSocial & the IPhone App Store.

I tried out Navajo and it sure is addictive. And I feel it has three distinct advantages- Firstly the playing interface is just like your regular IM, which everyone recognises; secondly the jumbled words puzzle is something that everyone has played before.. (hence time to learn should be fairly low); thirdly, you can actually play short fleeting games back & forth without having to stick out for long durations. All these factors should help in getting users hooked!

Overall it look very promising… add the app to your Facebook profile and get started right now.