India clears Scrabulous

THE INDIAN BROTHERS behind the word game Scrabulous have had a half victory in their battle with global game giants Hasbro and Mattel.

A Delhi High Court ruled that their game did not violate copyrights related to Scrabble but forbade Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla from using the Scrabulous or Scrabble names

It rejected the brothers' claims that the word 'scrabble' was generic and therefore could not be protected by trademark rules.

Wigged one Justice S Ravindra Bhat said that Scrabble was " incapable of copyright protection".

Scrabulous was one of its most popular games on Facebook, but it was scrapped following a copyright complaint from Mattel.

The Agarwallas launched a new game, Wordscraper, which was almost identical to Scrabulous. It has 500,000 monthly active users. More than 600,000 people used to play Scrabulous.

A non-Facebook version of Scrabulous at scrabulous.com has been removed following the court ruling but a new almost identical site was launched at lexulous.com. µ

L'Inq
AP