Facebook bans Scrabulous

Scrabulous has been exterminated from Facebook once and for all, and not just in the U.S.A. and Canada but in the U.K. and Australia as well.

Mattel Inc., which owns the rights to the Scrabulous IP outside the United States, strongly continued Hasbo’s last month’s initiative and supported them with a new takedown notice. The latter owns the rights to the IP in the U.S. The company blocked access for U.S. and Canadian users in July after Hasbro sued Scrabulous creators Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla.

Hasbro said that the names “Scrabble” and “Scrabulous” are “confusingly similar.” Moreover they complained about the rules of the game which are “not really different.” The traditional board game, Scrabble, and the online game, Scrabulous were redundantly alike.

The Indian brothers’ solution to this problem was Wordscraper which didn’t really do the trick, as circular tiles, the opportunity to earn quadruple points, and the ability to choose where extra points can be earned were among the petty differences between the so called new version and the old one that resembled the original Scrabble.

Nevertheless due to the fact that Mattel’s lawsuit in India against the two developers is still going on Facebook will allow users in the country to access it until a final court decision will be filed.

“It is astonishing that Facebook, which claims to be a fair and neutral party, took this step even though they were fully aware of the circumstances under which the Mattel letter was sent to them,” said Rajat one of the two brothers.