Monopoly with Google Maps
By Techgirl

Are you an Indian right winger who wants to take over Karachi and Islamabad? Or a Pakistani Jehadi who wants to wrest Kargil from India?  Now, you can.  Hasbro, which owns Scrabble and Monopoly in USA, has now launched a new game ‘Monopoly City Streets’. This is a worldwide game of Monopoly which uses Google Maps as the game board. Monopoly has always been very popular with Indians.

While the old Monopoly was restricted to cities and countries, the new game allows you to buy land in any country which Google Maps has been authorized to show.  So, Indian and Pakistani military bases are out.  So, are sensitive nuclear reactors in Israel and North Korea. But you can ‘own’ most streets in the world. Like the older version of the game, you can use all kinds of clever tricks to sabotage your gaming rivals.

Indian techies are well aware of American firm Hasbro which has just launched ‘Monopoly City Streets’. A brief background.  Bengal-based Agarwala brothers launched Scrabulous on the internet which was based on the American board game Scrabble. Scrabulous soon became a hit on Facebook and drew the attention of its rightful owners.    Hasbro, which owns Scrabble in USA, offered the Indian brothers a large sum of money to hand over their clone but the brothers refused.  Hasbro then sued the brothers in America and got their clone banned from Facebook.  Hasbro also launched an internet version of their board game which is gaining popularity.

In August,  the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) launched Bhuvan as a satellite mapping tool. In the heady first few days, many Indians labeled Bhuvan as a Google Maps killer.

Would some businessman use the launch of Bhuvan as an opportunity to develop an Indian clone of ‘Monopoly City Streets’?

(Techgoss had published the following story on Jan 5, 2009)

Scrabulous sort of back
By Techgirl

Are you sick of this whole Scrabulous saga?  The legal battle between the International sasses (in the form of Hasbro and Mattel) and Indian Bahus (in the form of Rajat and Jayant Agarwala who created Scrabulous as a clone of Scrabble) has more twists and turns then a day time soap opera on Zee TV.

Firstly, a brief background.  Bengal-based Agarwala brothers launched Scrabulous on the internet which was based on the American board game Scrabble. Scrabulous soon became a hit on Facebook and drew the attention of its rightful owners.    Hasbro, which owns Scrabble in USA, offered the Indian brothers a large sum of money to hand over their clone but the brothers refused.  Hasbro then sued the brothers in America and got their clone banned from Facebook.  Hasbro also launched an internet version of their board game which is gaining popularity.

Mattel, which owns Scrabble in rest of the world, sued the Agarwala brothers in India.  The Delhi High Court ordered the brothers to stop using Scrabulous in any shape or form.  But the Delhi Court ruled that Mattel did not own a copyright to their famous board game Scrabble as it is “not an original work”.  This judgment is being appealed.

The brothers stopped Scrabulous and created a new game Wordscraper on Facebook.

On Dec 12, Hasbro (which owns Scrabble rights in USA and Canada) withdrew its lawsuit in American courts against RJ Softwares which is owned by the Agarwala brothers. According to a Facebook blog Hasbro withdrew the case against the Indian brothers because the American company has won on many fronts.  The legal version of Scrabble is doing well on Facebook and the internet.   Hasbro would have also weighed up the legal costs and negative publicity emanating from suing the Indians as factors before withdrawing their case.

So how is the name game Wordscraper by the Bengal-based Agarwala brothers doing on Facebook as compared to Scrabble?  Not too well.  Wordscraper has been flat while Hasbro owned Scrabble is gaining traffic every week.

The court case in America has now been settled.  The Indian court case has some time to go.

Now there has been another twist in the Scrabulous saga.   After Hasbro withdrew its case against the Agarwala brothers on December 12, 2008,   the Indians have launched another ‘new’ game Lexulous on Facebook.  Lexulous is Scrabulous with a few rules changed to avoid legal action.  Lexulous is so similar to Scrabulous that it even has the historical games on Scrabulous before it was yanked by Facebook.

The question now is will Hasbro/Mattel sue the Agarwala brothers again if Lexulous becomes too successful?  After all, Lexulous continues to store historical data from when it was Scrabulous.  And American as well as Indian courts have ruled the Agarwala brothers never had the right to use the name Scrabulous and so any structure built on using the illegal name is tainted in the eyes of the law.

Lexulous was launched on Facebook on Dec 31, 2008.  40 thousand Facebook users have checked it out and/or signed on to complete games which were not finished before Facebook ejected it.

(Techgoss had run the following story on Nov 25, 2008)

Scrabble: Cong vs BJP
By Techgirl

The saga of scrabble impersonator Scrabulous continues.   It has more twists and turns than a B grade Bollywood movie.

Firstly, a brief background.  Bengal-based Agarwala brothers launched Scrabulous on the internet which was based on the American board game Scrabble. Scrabulous soon became a hit on Facebook and drew the attention of its rightful owners.    Hasbro, which owns Scrabble in USA, offered the Indian brothers a large sum of money to hand over their clone but the brothers refused.  Hasbro then sued the brothers in America and got their clone banned from Facebook.  Hasbro also launched an internet version of their board game which is gaining popularity.

Mattel, which owns Scrabble in rest of the world, sued the Agarwala brothers in India.  The Delhi High Court ordered the brothers to stop using Scrabulous in any shape or form.  But the Delhi Court ruled that Mattel did not own a copyright to their famous board game Scrabble as it is “not an original work”.

India’s leading IP blog SpicyIP has now given an update on the case.  Mattel has appealed the Delhi High Court decision that it did have a copyright to the popular board game Scrabble.  Mattel is represented by distinguished lawyer Jaitley while the Agarwala brothers have hired respected lawyer Dr. Abhishek Singhvi.  Jaitley is one of the BJP Spokesperson while Singhvi speaks for the Congress.  Each of these distinguished lawyers has a chance to become minister if their political parties win the next election.

As always legal matters can be complicated and so the full Spicy IP article is recommended reading.

Perhaps the Indian brothers are now wishing that they had just taken the huge ‘compensation’ offered by Hasbro/Mattel to hand over their cloned game to the rightful owners.  That would have been a win-win situation.  At this point in time it looks like a Lose-Lose scenario.

Techgoss note:  Techgirl is a senior Tech journalist who reports on the IT, KPO and KPO Sectors for a leading media house.  In her spare time, she dabbles in satire in her blog http://techgirltalk.blogspot.co