Comments for Hasbro to Facebook: Take Down Scrabulous, Bogglific

Hasbro to Facebook: Take Down Scrabulous, Bogglific

2008-01-16T15:24:11Z

I admit an unhealthy addiction to Scrabble. I have been playing almost daily for many years. I think my girlfriend and I own 5 or 6 different versions of the game between the two of us. That's why I was so excited last year when brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla launched Scrabulous on the Facebook platform (they actually created the game in 2006, but it didn't really take off until it was introduced to the Facebook audience). Being rather familiar with the various incarnations of Scrabble online, I am confident in my opinion that Scrabulous is by far the best.

But in the back of my mind I knew it wouldn't last. The name is too close to Hasbro's trademark. The rules, tile distribution, the game board -- all the things that make it superior in every way to Yahoo!'s Literati -- all infringe on Hasbro's copyrights. And so, this past week has not been a very good one in Scrabulous land.

]]> On Friday, Fortune's Josh Quittner broke the story that Hasbro had sent the Agarwalla brothers a cease and desist letter. According to Jayant Agarwalla, Facebook was sent a take down request two weeks ago. As of this morning, Scrabulous -- where I am currently engaged in 5 matches -- is still online.

It's easy to see why Scrabulous caught Hasbro's attention. According to Facebook measurement firm Adonomics, it is currently the 9th most popular app on the site by active users, with over 600,000 today. It generates 70 million pageviews per month and pulls in "over $25,000 a month."

Fans of the application have taken Quittner's advice to "please start a Facebook group to save Scrabulous" to heart, and the Save Scrabulous group this morning has about 3,000 members. Users have organized email campaigns aimed at Hasbro headquarters, and the BBC News has even taken notice, with a reporter posting a call for Londoners willing to be interviewed live on BBC News 24.

Hasbro has also gone after Bogglific, which is a Facebook incarnation of its Boggle word game. "Hasbro, Inc. has sent a DMCA notification notice to Facebook regarding Bogglific. They claim it violates their trademark, and violates copyright over the Boggle rules," wrote developer Roger Nesbitt in an open letter to users this morning. "I'm no lawyer, and can't see how it violates copyright. But I have neither the time nor the money to fight this, and Facebook has given me a grace period of 48 hours to shut the application down voluntarily."

It would be interesting to see if Hasbro has experienced any sort of sales bump since the explosion of these games on Facebook. A number of users posting to the "Save Scrabulous" group have said that they became hooked on the game via Facebook and have since purchased copies of the board game (and the same anecdotal evidence appears on the message board of a group trying to save Bogglific). It seems a safe bet that apps like Scrabulous and Bogglific have exposed these traditional board games to a new audience. It is easy to draw parallels to the RIAA here.

"Anything promoting Scrabble to a younger audience is a good thing," said Stewart Holden, the publicity officer for the Association of British Scrabble Players, which has operated under a licensing agreement with Mattel (who licenses the product internationally) since 1987. "While we recognize the legal ownership of the Scrabble trademark by Hasbro and Mattel, the impact of the Facebook Scrabulous application has been enormous and it would be a shame if no agreement could be reached which enabled this huge publicity boost for the game to continue."

The Aragwalla's are reportedly trying to work out a licensing deal with Hasbro.

A form letter sent by Hasbro Senior Manager of Consumer Affairs Kriss De Nardo to Scrabulous fans who have emailed the Rhode Island-based company seems to indicate that the company is open to licensing the use of the Scrabble intellectual property. "SCRABBLE has been entertaining millions of people around the world for 60 years so we are not surprised that fans have thoroughly enjoyed playing Scrabulous on Facebook.com," De Nardo wrote in the letter. "What consumers may not realize, however, is that Scrabulous is an illegally copied online version of the world’s most popular word game, the copyrights and trademarks for which are owned by Hasbro in the U.S. and Canada and Mattel in the rest of the world. We encourage fans to continue to lay down online tiles at sites that have legally licensed the interactive rights to host SCRABBLE fun."

However, licensing attempts could possibly be stymied in the case of Scrabble, because the online rights for the game currently belong to computer game company Electronic Arts.

It would seem that Hasbro has three options: force a take down of the infringing apps, work out a licensing agreement with them, buy them. As Josh Quittner suggests:

"If I were an evil genius running a board games company whose product line spanned everything from Monopoly to Clue, I might do this: Wait until someone comes up with an excellent implementation of my games and does the hard work of coding and debugging the thing and signing up the masses. Then, once it got to scale, I’d sweep in and take it over. Let the best pirate site win! If I were compassionate, I’d even cut in the guys who did all the work for a percentage point or two to keep the site running."

Are you listening Hasbro?

Comment from ITrush on 2008-01-16

2008-01-16T15:49:25Z

One of my favorite! nice to know that facebook audience will now be able to enjoy this kind of board game.

nhick
http://www.itrush.com

Comment from Stu on 2008-01-16

2008-01-16T16:40:45Z

Hey, anyone who is pulling in $25K monthly from one app and claims not to be able to afford legal fees is just taking the piss.

Comment from Raza Imam on 2008-01-16

2008-01-16T17:46:28Z

It's funny how the collaborative economy including:

-Web 2.0
-User generated content
-Open source
-Crowd sourcing
-Blogging
-Peer2peer file sharing
-Social networking
-etc.

is forcing big players to rethink how they do business. I keep thinking of Radiohead and how they bypassed big record labels. When I was in high school and Napster was still popular, I always thought that instead of complaining, record companies should buy a piece of Napster and promote its use rather than trying to shut p2p networks down.

When I first heard about Radiohead’s move on NPR a few months ago I knew it was going to be a success. Web 2.0, user generated content, open source, peer-to-peer file sharing etc. all point to the growing communal inclinations of our society. The tide is changing and yesterday’s power-brokers are today’s paupers. I mean, we live in an age where a post on Digg can reach more people than all major networks and newspapers combined (and arguably from a more sophisticated audience as well)

Genuinely successful business people have always known that if you offer true value, publicity, money, fame, and happiness will naturally follow. ‘Pay it forward’ works. The writing is on the wall. People who fail to see it will go down with the Dodo bird.

I was listening to the story about these brothers in India who created Scrabulous and how Hasbro is all up in arms about it. These dinosaur companies need to get their heads out of their butts and recognize that this is good for them... or simply offer to buy the company out. Hooting and hollering and making a big fit does not help them.

People are upset that TicketMaster bought TicketsNow (and rightfully so) I'm not happy that TicketMaster is increasing their prices, but it shows how they're being forced to legitimize these 'scalpers'. They're changing with the times; it's just good business sense.

A word of advice to stodgy business execs... don't fight change, embrace it!

Raza Imam
http://BoycottSoftwareSweatshops.com

Comment from Dave on 2008-01-16

2008-01-17T05:30:24Z

OK -- seriously now. This game might be awesome, but there's no denying that it's a blatant theft of IP.

We can all band together and say 'Hey Big nasty Hasbro, stop picking on the little guy!! This game is fun and we want to keep playing.'

But really, Hasbro does own the rights. Someone (who may or may not have worked for hasbro) already went through the trouble of coming up with the game concept, the rules and the point system. Hasbro did the work of making the original board game popular in the first place.

You say that developing the facebook app, and doing the coding is the hard work? No -- making scrabble a household name, creating the idea, and marketing it to millions is the hard work. Copying the system into a facebook app and monetizing it is nothing in comparison. How many hours do you think it took to make scrabulous? Now, how many *years* did it take to make scrabble popular.

It's a household game for a reason - and that reason is not scrabulous.

There are many cases where a large company sues some smaller dude for stealing their IP. In this case, I really do think that Hasbro has it right. Someone is using their ideas, their trademarks, and their market power for their wn personal profit.

If scrabulous is to stay around, it is going to have to license that IP from Hasbro (or EA), or it's going to have to sell the work.

Forget the 'Save Scrabulous' facebook group, we should be petitioning scrabulous and hasbro together to form a joint company where we still get to play our favorite game, in the environment that we want.

Comment from Paul on 2008-01-17

2008-01-17T09:43:28Z

My guess is that Hasbro, being a traditional company at heart doesn't see the potential that this poses, and as such aren't prepared to stump the dough.

Comment from JulesLt on 2008-01-17

2008-01-17T12:04:56Z

Claiming you don't know anything about copyright because you're just a developer suggests someone is lying or just far more stupid than I'd possibly expect someone running a business to be.

Basically, you have a lot of people out there without any creative ideas but technical skill who want ideas to 'be free' because that would be really helpful to their business.

[For the record, I'm against pure software patents]

>When I first heard about Radiohead’s move on NPR a few >months ago I knew it was going to be a success.

Because major label backing had absolutely no part in Radiohead becoming the huge act they now are - a band who have largely just popularised other independent artists innovations (and to be fair, like Nirvana, ofter credited and promoted their influence).

To me they are just a great example of the fact that there is still a huge audience out there waiting for music to come to it, rather than actively engaging in looking for good music.

>Web 2.0, user generated content, open source, peer-to-peer >file sharing etc. all point to the growing communal >inclinations of our society.

And indeed the age old popularity of something for 'nothing'. I don't see a lot of evidence that there's actually much shift towards a more communitarian or genuinely anarchistic economy.

I also think that history suggests there is a limit to the number of people who want to actively engage in culture - if you consider similar DIY moments, like the late 60s, or the post-punk independent era, you can see that it was only a tiny minority that actually engaged.

It takes more time/effort/attention to be engaged - and that is what big media has always understood.

Comment from Sean Tierney on 2008-01-18

2008-01-18T22:16:16Z

Amen to this Josh. Just joined the FB group.

Your move btw ;-)

sean

Comment from Mick Rogers on 2008-01-28

2008-01-29T01:49:27Z

Why the big fuss the Board on scrabulous is just like http://www.isc.ro where I play scrabble, it's a big talking point on there also