Scrabulous returns to Facebook

IDG News Service — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:52:20 -0400

After being removed from Facebook following a legal wrangle with Scrabble's makers Hasbro, the third-party app Scrabulous has returned to the social networking site.

The app had been suspended earlier this week for US and Canadian users, after Hasbro sued its developers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla citing copyright and trademark infringement.

However, the pair have tweaked the app to allow users to design their own boards as well as renaming it Wordscraper, in a bid to beat the legal action.

"It's going to come down to the little things like squares and circles and double, triple and so on," said Ethan Horwitz, an intellectual property lawyer at King and Spalding.

"What they have done is taken a big step in the right direction, but I don't think it's a big enough step."

Hasbro said "it will evaluate every situation individually and take actions as appropriate."