14 DAY TRIAL // Scrabulous, one of the most popular games that could be found on Facebook, has been shut down. Those who now want to connect to the application receive the message "Scrabulous is disabled for U.S. and Canadian users until further notice," although users from outside of America also complain that their access to the game has been cut off.
The reason why Facebook removed the application was that it was a counterpart of the board game Scrabble and that the creators of the original version were not happy with having their copyrights infringed. A few days ago, Hasbro, the company that has the copyrights for Scrabble in the U.S., filed a lawsuit against the two Indian brothers who created the online version of the game to be used by Facebook subscribers.
"Defendants' unlawful acts have unjustly enriched them and have caused and continue to cause irreparable injury to the value and goodwill of the SCRABBLE crossword game trademarks, as well as to Hasbro's business, goodwill and reputation. In addition, Hasbro has been damaged in a monetary amount to be determined at trial," officials for Hasbro said in the complaint filed against Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla, the two brothers behind Scrabulous.
"This is the second time Hasbro has done this. In the mid 90s I was part of an Internet group playing scrabble online. It was great fun with games going all the time. Hasbro went after the creators of the site and it shut down. I was thrilled to see it on Facebook and surprised that Hasbro had left it alone. So, they've done it before, and they'll continue to do it." says one of the disappointed users.
In order to appease all those people who were really fond of online crosswords, Facebook has launched on its property a BETA legal version of Scrabble. Sadly, the move did not generate the expected results, as all those who voted it gave it only 1.5 out of 5 stars, while the illegal Scrabulous had a 4.2-star rating.