Indian court hands Scrabulous mixed verdict

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The creators of Scrabulous sent their fans a spot of good news this morning.

Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla, the Indian brothers who came up with the Scrabble-style word game for Facebook, told fans that the Dehli courts ruled that their game did not violate Mattel’s copyrights. It did, however, consider the name ‘Scrabulous’ a trademark violation of Scrabble and ordered the Agarwallas to stop using the word, the brothers said.

‘We will take a call on whether we will appeal against the decision on the Trademark after consulting our legal advisors,’ the Agarwallas wrote in an e-mail to fans. Bottom line: The Indian court believes that the Scrabulous game is legally in the clear; it’s just that it can’t be called that.

Mattel, based in El Segundo, did not immediately return calls requesting information and comment.

Mattel, which owns the international rights to Scrabble, sued the Agarwallas in Indian court in February. Hasbro, the owner of Scrabble in North America, followed suit in July. Several days later, the Agarwallas pulled the application from Facebook and put up a new game called Wordscraper, a similar game that lets players modify their own board.

The Agarwallas today said that fans had taken to the new version, playing 1 million Wordscraper games in the last month.

-- Alex Pham