As the Facebook phenomenon continues to tighten its grip on the social-networking universe, new applications are popping up more quickly than cheesy videos on your FunWall. So far, movie quotes, popular board games, even excerpts from books have all danced around potential copyright infringement, but after a year of heavy usage, one application has finally been challenged.
Scrabulous — one of the most highly used Facebook applications, boasting an average of more than a half-million daily users — is under legal fire from Hasbro and Mattel, both of whom hold copyrights to the popular board game Scrabble.
The possibility of a lawsuit has loomed since January, when Hasbro threatened to sue creators Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla. On Thursday, Hasbro moved forward with its threat, arguing in its suit that the application is an infringement upon Scrabble intellectual property.
Supporters of the wildly popular game argue that Scrabulous helps, not hurts, the Scrabble franchise by exposing more people to the game itself and have even gone so far as to create a Save Scrabulous application.
Vidya Wang, a supporter of Scrabulous, said, "I have bought tons of Hasbro original products, for myself and my students, friends and relatives, because of the free marketing done by people like the brothers who built Scrabulous."
The Save Scrabulous application lets users sign a petition stating they will not buy Scrabble if the suit follows through and that they will encourage their friends to do the same. So far, the app has more than 600 users.
Now that Facebook's popularity has become common knowledge, is this just the first of many applications that may be shut down due to legal issues? Let us know in the comment section.
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