Toy maker Hasbro has agreed to drop a lawsuit against the company that created a phenomenally successful Facebook game—one that Hasbro forced the social network to drop as being too close to its own Scrabble title.
Hasbro had filed the lawsuit against RJ Softwares last summer, alleging that its Scrabulous infringed on the intellectual property of Hasbro’s title in look and feel.
Documents filed in U.S. District Court in New York last Friday show that Hasbro has decided to drop the lawsuit, although they did not give specific reasons for the withdrawal.
The lawsuit filing came shortly after Electronic Arts released an authorized Facebook version of an online Scrabble game under a licensing deal with Hasbro.
At the time of the suit, the free game Scrabulous had amassed an audience of almost half a million registered players on Facebook, including many overseas fans. A large number of those had expressed hopes that Hasbro would resolve its irritation with Scrabulous by simply buying the title and leaving it on Facebook.
Instead, in July, Hasbro filed an infringement lawsuit against the game’s Indian creators, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, and sent a takedown order to Facebook under the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Facebook resisted the takedown at first but complied in August when Mattel, which owns the Scrabble copyright outside North America, echoed the request. To date, the official Scrabble version has amassed only a portion of the audience Scrabulous did.
RJ Software brought its wordplay back up to Facebook less than 24 hours later in a game called “Wordscraper” that incorporated changes to both rules and look and feel intended to appease Hasbro’s infringement worries. The name change was also meant to reduce confusion with Hasbro’s famous title.
Wordscraper is also available on its own Web site, Lexulous.com.
A statement from Hasbro to press outlets said that the agreement to discontinue the suit “provides people in the U.S. and Canada with a choice of different games and also avoids potentially lengthy and costly litigation.” When the Hasbro suit was filed, Facebook expressed “disappointment” at having been drawn into the argument between Hasbro and the Agarwallas. The social network relies heavily on innovative applications, widgets and viral tools to build and engage its user base—and in time to present an appealing target to advertisers.
“Over the past year, Facebook has tried to use its status as neutral platform provider to help the parties come to an amicable agreement,” the social network said in a statement at the time the suit was filing and the game taken offline.” The network went on to say that it hoped the suit wouldn’t discourage other developers from creating applications tailored to its members.
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