Copyright, India, Intellectual Property, Scrabble / Scrabulous, Social Networking Websites, Trademarks

More Facebook Lawsuits: Hasbro Doesn't Think Scrabulous Is Fabulous

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Facebook, Facebook, Facebook. It’s all over the news these days due to a spate of lawsuits. If we weren’t so into Facebook, we might be over it. It’s way overexposed.
Anyway, here’s one of the latest suits. This one is near and dear to our hearts, as it concerns one of our favorite procrastination tools Facebook applications: Scrabulous. From the Associated Press:

The Indian creators of a Scrabble knock-off that has become one of the most popular activities on Facebook have been sued by Hasbro, the company that owns the word game’s North American rights.

You might think this will give you the opportunity to break your Scrabulous habit and stop wasting so much time on Facebook. Not so fast — Hasbro conveniently launched its own version and hopes to keep you hooked:

The suit against Scrabulous’s creators comes less than two weeks after the release of an authorized version of Scrabble for Facebook.
Hasbro said in its lawsuit that Scrabulous violates its copyright and trademarks. Separately, Hasbro asked Facebook to block the game.

(Lat, let’s not start a new game until they figure this out. I shall savor my recent victory for now.)
More Facebook legal news, and a reason to create a Facebook profile if you haven’t already, after the jump.


A British businessman won a libel suit in London against a friend who created a fake profile on him. From Reuters:

In a test case, Mathew Firsht, who won £22,000 in damages, or $44,000, sued a former school friend over a false personal profile on the social networking site Facebook that included private information about him and untrue allegations about his sexual orientation….

The Facebook entry alleged that Firsht was signed up to other groups, including “Gay in the Wood … Borehamwood” – a town just north of London – and “Gay Jews in London.”

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We’ve been known to say that if you’re not on Facebook, you don’t exist. We just see this as another reason to create a Facebook profile if you don’t have one already: pre-emptive self-profiling.
Hasbro sues Scrabulous makers for copyright infringement [Associated Press]
British businessman wins libel suit over Facebook claims [Reuters via International Herald Tribune]

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