TekChakra.com

OK. So its now hitting the blogosphere, and will be on front page of the print media soon. Hasbro and Mattel are going after the Aggarwal brothers of Calcutta and Facebook for trademark and patent violations. ( If you missed it, read this and come back )

Initial thoughts? Well, firstly they’re making about $25,000 per month running adsense ads. The game is a top 10 app on Facebook. Hasbro and Mattel undoubtedly knew this scrabulous game was becoming big and waited for the right time. Now they’re doing all they can to go after Facebook and get all the free publicity. Will they approach the Aggarwal brothers and ask them to help make a legal version of Scrabble? Most probably not. Whats your take on that?

As of now the game is still live and is played by over 500,000 people - most of them addicted. So, a immediate withdrawl by Facebook - will leave a lot of people with twitching fingers. Already protesting groups have sprung up in support of Scrabulous.

Aggarwal brothers refuse to comment.

My take - they should have been a bit wiser…

1. Make a slight variation of Scrabble… don’t deviate too much in the game play - and keep it similar since you are targeting people who have played Scrabble. Keep the changed game play small enough so they can adapt and significant enough so you can argue in court.

2. Don’t link to Wikipedia entry for Scrabble in your game info area !! I thought this should’ve been obvious.

3. While I like the name variant - “Scrabulous” … i thought it could have been a bit more different.

Course of action … quickly build a twist, and launch a couple more games - fast!! Preferably a word game that is in public domain. This will allow some of your current users to satisfy their soon-to-be missing addiction - once Scrabulous is removed… which it probably will be, soon. What do readers think?

— Vishal Lamba    Filed under: Uncategorized