Scrabble board game makers and Facebook copyright issues
January 16, 2008 By Kerry
Filed under News
The makers of the board game Scrabble have asked Facebook which has overtaken MySpace and Bebo to become the most popular social networking site in the UK to pull their popular Scrabulous game from its website because of copyright issues.
It said that Hasbro and Mattel have jointly written to the US head office of the social networking site calling for the application to be removed.
Scrabulous is a miniature online form of the board game which Facebook users can add to their profile and challenge friends to play.
Hasbro owns the rights to Scrabble in the US and Canada. Mattel owns the rights elsewhere in the world.
A spokesman for Facebook said the firm would not be commenting at this stage.
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Do you play the game on Facebook?
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Yes, this should be removed unless Mattel and Hasbro license it to Facebook and or the people who “created” Scrabulous. It is a total ripoff. The appeal of this game is that it is just like Scrabble. Actually, the appeal of the game is that it IS Scrabble.
Scrabble — and, therefore, Scrabulous — is a great game. The people who own Scrabble deserve to be compensated for its value by those who stole the idea. Better still, they deserve to enjoy the rights to Scrabble without people stealing it.