Scrabulous
Encyclopedia
Lexulous is an online word game
based on the commercial board game
Scrabble
. It is run by an India
n company of the same name on a dedicated website, and is also available within the social networking site Facebook
.
The Scrabulous website was launched in 2005, and the game was added to Facebook as an application in 2007, quickly becoming the most popular game on Facebook. Due to copyright infringement
lawsuits, the game was removed from Facebook in 2008, first for North American users and later worldwide, with the Scrabulous website following suit.
A ruling by Delhi High Court allowed Calcutta-based Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla to retain the right to post their word game online, but they were not allowed to use Scrabulous, Scrabble or any other “similar sounding” name. Thus on 27 September 2008, a new website was launched using the new moniker "Lexulous". It has a live version and practice mode, and an option for play by email.
On 20 December 2008, Hasbro
withdrew their lawsuit against RJ Softwares. On 1 January 2009, Lexulous was activated on Facebook starting with 0 monthly active users. As of 23 March 2009, the application had about 585,000 monthly active users. EA's version had about 586,000 while RealNetwork's version had 357,000 users.
, India
. The Scrabulous website was created at the end of 2005, after the Agarwalla brothers, Rajat and Jayant, who has won numerous Scrabble tournaments, felt the need for a free gaming site where the popular game could be played. It was initially made available as "BingoBinge", with the site moving to Scrabulous on 5 July 2006.
In 2006 the website had 20,000 registered users, but after the developers made an application for the popular social networking website Facebook
it had been added to 840,000 user pages, with more than 500,000 users daily, giving it "the most active users of any game that can be played over Facebook".
Scrabulous faced legal issues due to its resemblance to Scrabble
along with a similar name. It also copied the board layout, rules, and at one stage the number of tiles. These issues forced the removal of the game from Facebook in mid-2008 and its eventual rebranding. The rights to Scrabble are currently owned within the US and Canada
by Hasbro
, and throughout the rest of the world by Mattel
.
According to Anthony Falzone — head of the Fair Use Project at Stanford University
— copyright laws do not allow someone to freely copy the particular expression of an idea. In his article in the Wall Street Journal, Jamin Brophy-Warren has said that Hasbro
Inc. has refused to comment on legal matters, while the creators have mentioned informing the company about their site. The former Scrabulous website made several references to Scrabble, and previously provided a link to the rules of Scrabble and promoted itself as the best place to play Scrabble online.
It was reported that Hasbro made an attempt to acquire Scrabulous in January 2008 for an undisclosed sum in the range of $10 million. The game had been generating advertising revenue of over $25,000 a month for the Agarwalla brothers, however they refused to sell their application to Hasbro, instead requesting a "multiple" of $10 million. It was reported that the Agarwallas had also been looking for other potential suitors who would be willing to pay higher premiums.
In reaction to the news that the Facebook application was in legal jeopardy, two groups made a "SCRABULOUS" music video spoof of the Fergie song "Glamorous." The video from web entertainment group TastesLikeTV.com professes "L, T, S, and R / Ain't gonna get you very far," while the YouTube video created by Team Awesome Productions says that Scrabulous is the "swappy, swappy." Both viral web videos were mentioned in the February 22, 2008 issue of Entertainment Weekly
.
Mattel launched its official version of online Scrabble, Scrabble by Mattel, on Facebook in late March 2008. As Hasbro controls the rights to Scrabble for North America with Mattel holding them for the rest of the world, the Facebook application is available only to players outside the United States and Canada. Scrabulous users reacted by creating a group called Save Scrabulous, asking Facebook to shut down the game on its site. Reportedly more than 54,000 fans have joined this group. It had also been reported that Scrabulous fans had written to Hasbro and Mattel demanding that the companies make "the right decision", and threatened to stop buying Mattel and Hasbro products if they shut down Scrabulous.
formally sued Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, along with their company, RJ Softwares. The suit claimed Scrabulous violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
and infringed upon Hasbro's intellectual property
rights. On 29 July 2008, Scrabulous was shut down on Facebook for users in North America, with the error message, "Scrabulous is disabled for US and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like to stay informed about developments in this matter, please click here." Less than a month later, the game was also pulled in all other countries but India.
On 26 September 2008, the Scrabulous web site was suspended. This followed a ruling by the Delhi High Court
that although the game Scrabble itself could not be copyrighted, the Agarwalla brothers could therefore continue to offer their similar game online. They were however not permitted to use the name Scrabulous or any other name similar to that of Scrabble.
Lexulous would also alter the layout of the game to differentiate it more from Scrabble. This change occurred on 3 December 2008, and saw score multipliers moved around the board, and the point score of tiles no longer matching those of Scrabble. In addition a player is now given 8 tiles to play with instead of the traditional 7 tiles. A 4x multiplier had been added to the game, however this feature was removed the next day.
As of early 2011, one of the original Lexulous features, ordinary seven-letter Scrabble (including solitaire and versus the robot) became available again on the Lexulous website for users outside of USA and Canada.
was released after Scrabulous was shut down; however the application has been available since January 2008.
.
Word game
Word games and puzzles are spoken or board games often designed to test ability with language or to explore its properties.Word games are generally engaged as a source of entertainment, but have been found to serve an educational purpose as well...
based on the commercial board game
Board game
A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve...
Scrabble
Scrabble
Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by forming words from individual lettered tiles on a game board marked with a 15-by-15 grid. The words are formed across and down in crossword fashion and must appear in a standard dictionary. Official reference works provide a list...
. It is run by an India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n company of the same name on a dedicated website, and is also available within the social networking site Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
.
The Scrabulous website was launched in 2005, and the game was added to Facebook as an application in 2007, quickly becoming the most popular game on Facebook. Due to copyright infringement
Copyright infringement
Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.- "Piracy" :...
lawsuits, the game was removed from Facebook in 2008, first for North American users and later worldwide, with the Scrabulous website following suit.
A ruling by Delhi High Court allowed Calcutta-based Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla to retain the right to post their word game online, but they were not allowed to use Scrabulous, Scrabble or any other “similar sounding” name. Thus on 27 September 2008, a new website was launched using the new moniker "Lexulous". It has a live version and practice mode, and an option for play by email.
On 20 December 2008, Hasbro
Hasbro
Hasbro is a multinational toy and boardgame company from the United States of America. It is one of the largest toy makers in the world. The corporate headquarters is located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, United States...
withdrew their lawsuit against RJ Softwares. On 1 January 2009, Lexulous was activated on Facebook starting with 0 monthly active users. As of 23 March 2009, the application had about 585,000 monthly active users. EA's version had about 586,000 while RealNetwork's version had 357,000 users.
History
The Scrabulous company was founded by Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, both commerce graduates of St. Xavier's College, KolkataSt. Xavier's College, Calcutta
St. Xavier's College is located in Kolkata, India, and is named after St. Francis Xavier, a Jesuit saint of the 16th century, who travelled to India. It is an autonomous college affiliated to the University of Calcutta. It gained autonomy in July 2006, thus becoming the first autonomous college of...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. The Scrabulous website was created at the end of 2005, after the Agarwalla brothers, Rajat and Jayant, who has won numerous Scrabble tournaments, felt the need for a free gaming site where the popular game could be played. It was initially made available as "BingoBinge", with the site moving to Scrabulous on 5 July 2006.
In 2006 the website had 20,000 registered users, but after the developers made an application for the popular social networking website Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
it had been added to 840,000 user pages, with more than 500,000 users daily, giving it "the most active users of any game that can be played over Facebook".
Legal and copyright issues
Scrabble
Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by forming words from individual lettered tiles on a game board marked with a 15-by-15 grid. The words are formed across and down in crossword fashion and must appear in a standard dictionary. Official reference works provide a list...
along with a similar name. It also copied the board layout, rules, and at one stage the number of tiles. These issues forced the removal of the game from Facebook in mid-2008 and its eventual rebranding. The rights to Scrabble are currently owned within the US and Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
by Hasbro
Hasbro
Hasbro is a multinational toy and boardgame company from the United States of America. It is one of the largest toy makers in the world. The corporate headquarters is located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, United States...
, and throughout the rest of the world by Mattel
Mattel
Mattel, Inc. is the world's largest toy company based on revenue. The products it produces include Fisher Price, Barbie dolls, Hot Wheels and Matchbox toys, Masters of the Universe, American Girl dolls, board games, and, in the early 1980s, video game consoles. The company's name is derived from...
.
According to Anthony Falzone — head of the Fair Use Project at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
— copyright laws do not allow someone to freely copy the particular expression of an idea. In his article in the Wall Street Journal, Jamin Brophy-Warren has said that Hasbro
Hasbro
Hasbro is a multinational toy and boardgame company from the United States of America. It is one of the largest toy makers in the world. The corporate headquarters is located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, United States...
Inc. has refused to comment on legal matters, while the creators have mentioned informing the company about their site. The former Scrabulous website made several references to Scrabble, and previously provided a link to the rules of Scrabble and promoted itself as the best place to play Scrabble online.
It was reported that Hasbro made an attempt to acquire Scrabulous in January 2008 for an undisclosed sum in the range of $10 million. The game had been generating advertising revenue of over $25,000 a month for the Agarwalla brothers, however they refused to sell their application to Hasbro, instead requesting a "multiple" of $10 million. It was reported that the Agarwallas had also been looking for other potential suitors who would be willing to pay higher premiums.
Fan protest
As of October 2007, the term Scrabulous was registered as a trademark and service mark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, but on February 2008 it was officially abandoned by the applicant. Hasbro threatened to shut Scrabulous down via legal means in January 2008. Facebook was also asked to pull Scrabulous from its site's application database, but initially demurred.In reaction to the news that the Facebook application was in legal jeopardy, two groups made a "SCRABULOUS" music video spoof of the Fergie song "Glamorous." The video from web entertainment group TastesLikeTV.com professes "L, T, S, and R / Ain't gonna get you very far," while the YouTube video created by Team Awesome Productions says that Scrabulous is the "swappy, swappy." Both viral web videos were mentioned in the February 22, 2008 issue of Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
.
Mattel launched its official version of online Scrabble, Scrabble by Mattel, on Facebook in late March 2008. As Hasbro controls the rights to Scrabble for North America with Mattel holding them for the rest of the world, the Facebook application is available only to players outside the United States and Canada. Scrabulous users reacted by creating a group called Save Scrabulous, asking Facebook to shut down the game on its site. Reportedly more than 54,000 fans have joined this group. It had also been reported that Scrabulous fans had written to Hasbro and Mattel demanding that the companies make "the right decision", and threatened to stop buying Mattel and Hasbro products if they shut down Scrabulous.
Lawsuit
On 24 July 2008, HasbroHasbro
Hasbro is a multinational toy and boardgame company from the United States of America. It is one of the largest toy makers in the world. The corporate headquarters is located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, United States...
formally sued Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, along with their company, RJ Softwares. The suit claimed Scrabulous violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization . It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to...
and infringed upon Hasbro's intellectual property
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
rights. On 29 July 2008, Scrabulous was shut down on Facebook for users in North America, with the error message, "Scrabulous is disabled for US and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like to stay informed about developments in this matter, please click here." Less than a month later, the game was also pulled in all other countries but India.
On 26 September 2008, the Scrabulous web site was suspended. This followed a ruling by the Delhi High Court
Delhi High Court
The High Court of Delhi was established on 31 October 1966. The High Court of Delhi was established with four judges. They were Chief Justice K. S. Hegde, Justice I. D. Dua, Justice H. R. Khanna and Justice S. K. Kapur.-History:...
that although the game Scrabble itself could not be copyrighted, the Agarwalla brothers could therefore continue to offer their similar game online. They were however not permitted to use the name Scrabulous or any other name similar to that of Scrabble.
Launch of Lexulous
The day after the Delhi High Court ruling, the game was once more made available online under the new name "Lexulous". Whilst the game had an appearance overhaul, it still maintained the essential elements of the Scrabulous version including all of its past records, user IDs, and saved information.Lexulous would also alter the layout of the game to differentiate it more from Scrabble. This change occurred on 3 December 2008, and saw score multipliers moved around the board, and the point score of tiles no longer matching those of Scrabble. In addition a player is now given 8 tiles to play with instead of the traditional 7 tiles. A 4x multiplier had been added to the game, however this feature was removed the next day.
As of early 2011, one of the original Lexulous features, ordinary seven-letter Scrabble (including solitaire and versus the robot) became available again on the Lexulous website for users outside of USA and Canada.
Wordscraper
Wordscraper is a Scrabble-based word game application available on Facebook, also created by the Agarwalla brothers, which received an influx of people from the closure of Scrabulous in North America. It was reported inaccurately that WordscraperWordscraper
Wordscraper is a Scrabble-style word game available as a Facebook application. It was created by the Agarwalla brothers Rajat and Jayant, creators of Scrabulous, and differs from Scrabble by having no fixed board design or tile distribution, instead prompting the user to choose their own.Although...
was released after Scrabulous was shut down; however the application has been available since January 2008.
Media and popularity
Being one of the very first applications launched on Facebook, Scrabulous enjoyed relatively large popularity. It was featured in PC World's 100 best products of 2008, and appeared in a question on the quiz show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is a television game show which offers large cash prizes for correctly answering a series of multiple-choice questions of increasing difficulty. The format is owned and licensed by Sony Pictures Television International. The maximum cash prize is one million pounds...
.
External links
- Lexulous application on Facebook, apps.facebook.com
- Lexulous website, lexulous.com