If you've ever played Scrabulous on Facebook, there's a good chance you quickly became addicted. If that's the case, you're going to be going through some serious withdrawal.
It turns out, Scrabble wasn't too excited about the application. The company behind the original board game say the Facebook version is a copyright violation and have asked the social networking site to take it down.
The Scrabulous application let users challenge their friends in an online version of the famous game. There are currently 600,563 daily active Scrabulous users. That will be a lot of disappointed scraddicts.
"Letters have been sent to Facebook in the United States regarding the Scrabulous application," a British Mattel spokeswoman told Reuters.
"Mattel values its intellectual property and actively protects its brands and trademarks.
"As Mattel owns the rights to the Scrabble trademark outside the United States and Canada, we are currently reviewing our position regarding other countries."
Yikes! In a way, isn't it an intelligent way to get younger generations, who would likely otherwise not interact with the Scrabble brand, to familiarize themselves with the game?
What Makes This Trend Stand Out
- Online Game Copyright Issues
- Opportunity for disruptive innovation in developing online games that do not infringe on copyright.
- Digital Board Game Adaptations
- Potential to create digital versions of traditional board games that can be played on social media platforms.
- Brand Protection in Social Media
- Opportunity to develop tools and strategies to protect intellectual property rights for brands on social networking sites.
Sectors Adopting This
- Gaming Industry
- Gaming companies could focus on creating original online games that are not subject to copyright issues.
- Board Game Industry
- Companies in the board game industry can explore partnerships with social media platforms to develop digital adaptations of their games.
- Intellectual Property Law
- Law firms specializing in intellectual property can offer services to help brands protect their trademarks and copyrights on social networking sites.
