Hasbro drops Scrabulous dispute in the States

The long running 'Scrabulous' dispute appears to finally be at an end.

Basically though the dispute involves the social networking site Facebook, on Facebook users can install their own add-ons. One such add-on was called Scrabulous and was based on the classic Hasbro word based board game Scrabble. The creators of Scrabulous, RJ Software were threatened with legal action by Hasbro and as such pulled the game. However the dispute did not end there, RJ Software then created two new games Wordscraper and Lexulous to get round the problem but again Hasbro threatened them with legal action for copyright infringement. Hasbro argued that the games were too similar, fortunately for the games' fans RJ Software and Hasbro have now come to an agreement over the games with RJ Software making the "necessary modifications" to satisfy Hasbro.

A joint statement provided as follows:

"The agreement provides people in the US and Canada with a choice of different games and also avoids potentially lengthy and costly litigation,".

Unfortunately for all involved the rights to Scrabble outside of the US and Canada are owned by Mattel. As of yet they have not announced that they will drop their claim against RJ Software.

IP Freely never liked Scrabulous in the first place!