Mattel says it will appeal Scrabulous ruling

Mattel, which owns the international rights to Scrabble, said today it would appeal last week's court ruling in India that the Scrabulous online word game did not violate Mattel's copyrights.

The court did, however, say Scrabulous infringed on the El Segundo toy company's Scrabble trademark, handing both parties a mixed victory.

"Clearly, we’re pleased with the trademark decision in India regarding Scrabulous," Mattel spokeswoman Julia Jensen said. "We disagree with the ruling on the copyright portion of the decision and plan to appeal."

Jensen noted that the court's jurisdiction does not reach outside India, although Mattel has so far filed suit only in that country.

Mattel first sued the creators of Scrabulous, Indian brothers Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla, in February. Hasbro, which owns the rights to Scrabble in North America, filed its Scrabulous lawsuit in July, prompting the Agarwallas to remove their popular game from Facebook and replace it with a new version called Wordscraper.

Until recently, some players were still able to access the old version on a website called Scrabulous.com, which the brothers took down and replaced with a new site, Lexulous.com.

-- Alex Pham

Images courtesy of RJ Softwares

Comments

[Shane Ranck]

What is wrong with people these days? All this stupid rhetoric about copyrights and infringements and blah blah blah. The purpose of games is for enjoyment by those interested to play. It should not matter in which the game is presented for people to play. The unfortunate thing today, is that money takes the fun out of simple ideas because everybody is trying to capitalize off of ideas from their own head or from someone else's head. All of you people should be ashamed, and I sincerely hope one day we all can open our hearts again and return to a compassionate awareness, and just maybe we will learn to live for each other instead of living just for ourselves.

[Shirley]

@Shane, copyrights should always be respected. How would you feel if you wrote a book and someone resold it under their own title?

In this case, sure, they presented games for people to play. But at the same time, they make money off of it via advertising. So its not like its a not-for-profit operation. So yes, it is always about money. The games were not there for people, but for profit.

[Tom Baird]

Why should it be that Mattel or Hasbro (or anyone) should be making money from an idea over a century old? Of course it is perfectly fair that one should be able to profit from an invention, and furthermore that one should be able to sell on the right to make that profit. But there should be some limits, as there are under patent law; to deny the rights of other folk to use use an idea a century from when it was thought up is daft and aside from providing a means by which some rich folk can get richer the current regulations acheive nothing.

i dont see what the fuss was all about I bet everybody that uses scrabulous/lexulous have got a game of scrabble at home, so mattel have already had their profit from the original purchase