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Wordscraper Takes Place Of Scrabulous On Facebook

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The Associated Press

Published: August 1, 2008

NEW YORK - Scrabulous is back on Facebook, but now it has a new name, new rules and circular tiles that could help its makers skirt legal claims from the owners of Scrabble.

The return came less than two days after the creators of Scrabulous blocked their popular version of the word game from U.S. and Canadian users of Facebook.

The Indian brothers behind Scrabulous have been sued in federal court by Hasbro, the owner of Scrabble's North American rights.

Now the game has reappeared with the name Wordscraper. The change could help it avoid brand confusion with Scrabble, a key point in trademark disputes.

The game has also changed. Instead of Scrabblelike square tiles, for instance, Wordscraper has circles. The tiles earning double and triple points have been rearranged, and tiles for quadruple points have been added.

Whether those changes will protect the creators from claims of copyright infringement remains to be seen.

Ideas cannot be copyrighted, but expressions of ideas can. The case could turn on whether Wordscraper feels more like Scrabble or a generic board game based on words.

"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 in New York. "What they've done is taking a step in the right direction, but I don't think it's a big enough step."

Furthermore, Wordscraper lets users design custom boards, including versions that happen to resemble Scrabble. In such cases, Wordscraper might claim federal protections from liability for their users' actions.

In a statement, Hasbro said it "will evaluate every situation individually and take actions as appropriate."

Word of the rechristened game started spreading through blogs, and by Thursday afternoon, thousands of Facebook users had added the application. Still, that's nowhere near the half-million or so daily users that Scrabulous had been enjoying.

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