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Scrabulous is an online version of the game Scrabble, written by two brothers, that has risen in popularity of late as a Facebook application.

The joint owners of Scrabble, Mattel and Hasbro, launched an action on Tuesday saying that the Scrabulous game was a “gross copyright and trademark infringement”. The companies asked Facebook to remove Scrabulous. (ref. BBC)

This in itself is a fair enough point, but are they missing the point? Games become popular because they get played. On the INternet, they are easy for programmers to recreate… and spread, especiallyu when they encourage a viral attitude. IE. you have to play with someone else, so you tell you friends.

For instance, Scrabulous has grown to regularly get more than 500,000 users a day playing. The interesting thing about consumers (and especially younger generations) is that they don’t understand why they shouldn’t be able to play this game online, and for free.

Subsequently, over 18,000 people have asked the same question through Jason Madhosingh’s Facebook Group - Save Scrabulous.

Surely, a more positive [brand] approach would be to agree a licence fee with the people who wrote the application?

I completely agree that they own the copyright and have rights, but they will miss out on brand recognition (500,000 users a DAY) and a passive income stream that could be utilised.

If it were me, I’d actually buy the application and create additional cross-selling.

The thing is, a bnit like file sharing platforms, it won’t be long before someone else creates a new version, and when they get shut down, someone else….