One article I read (and this was many months ago) claimed that the Ajarwallas were earning over $10K per day via advertising. I can't confirm this, so take it with a grain of paprika... anyways I don't harbour much pity for their legal situation.

For those interested in the details, here's the lawsuit [graphics8.nytimes.com]. They're not stringing the Ajarwallas up by their toes, they're just forcing them to stop the infringement, though I'll admit it deserves a more thorough reading.

This, IMO, is more interesting news than the YHOO/MSFT debacle. It has a real David and Goliath drama to it, and so far the Goliath has been playing very fair.

Odd that they haven't reached a buyout deal. Maybe Hasbro was waiting for this shoe to drop before pressing for a final price and decision.

They clearly stole another company's invention and profited massively from it. They should be in jail IMO.

Odd that they haven't reached a buyout deal. Maybe Hasbro was waiting for this shoe to drop before pressing for a final price and decision

Are you serious? Hasbro should take it and sue them for everything they made from that stolen property. Why should Hasbro pay criminals for stealing their stuff?

Why?

Because Hasbro realized that in not making an online and/or facebook connected version of their game, they had sadly underserviced the people who enjoy playing it. Scrabble is a hugely popular pastime, with official dictionaries, and international tournaments... It took the popularity of Scrabulous for Hasbro to realize that this whole "web" thing might be worth looking into...

A buyout deal would have been ideal, for Hasbro, for the Ajarwalla brothers, and for the public. An official "merger" and re-issue of Scrabulous, hyped by Hasbro, with killer UI upgrade by game-makers EA... could have been the game-launch of the year.

At any rate, I admire Hasbro for waiting until they had an official replacement ready before nuking the Indian knock-off app. Pity that we can't import our accumulated Scrabulous stats into the new official version.

Also a pity that the various license-owners for Scrabble couldn't get together to offer international gameplay; players in Canada/US are siloed in the North American version, unable to play against Scrabblers in Europe and elsewhere

Also a pity that the new Scrabble app doesn't have one feature that made Scrabulous awesome: the ability to connect with really good players who aren't in my friend list... and it's buggy as all get-out. The discussion board is swarmed with people yelling about how inferior it is. dialog boxes that "freeze" and have no cancel option, slow-loading superfuous Flash animation...

I'm in there now and I can't even start playing a game. Very disappointing. This isn't a "beta", it's a glitzy, rushed and feature-poor Alpha.