Richard Gottlieb

Toy Justice
July 29, 2008

Lately It seems like most of our major toy manufacturers are involved in some kind of litigation. Mattel, MGA and MEGA Brands are all engaged in lawsuits. Now, it looks like Hasbro is heading in that direction as well.

According to BusinessWeek and numerous other publications, Hasbro has sued the creators of Scrabbulous, an online version of Scrabble which Hasbro objects to as a violation of Scrabble’s intellectual property rights. For those of you not familiar with Scrabbulous, it is an incredibly popular, and totally unauthorized, version of Scrabble that is played on Facebook.

According to the July 24, 2008 BusinessWeek article, “Hasbro Threatens Facebook's Scrabulous,” Scrabulous is so important to Facebook that its loss could be a major financial blow to the company. As the magazine puts it: “Nearly 513,000 people play the game on Facebook each day. Best of all for Facebook, they're viewing ads as they play—helping generate revenue for a company that has struggled to find the best way to make money.”

All of these toy companies are absolutely correct in fighting to protect their intellectual property rights and are to be applauded for doing so. It is just a bit worrisome that at such a challenging time for the toy industry, so many of our leaders are forced to have their attention focused on areas other than producing great new products.

This industry runs on the new, the different and the exciting. When we look back on this time in toy history, will we see a reduction of great new products and revenue?    Stay tuned.

Posted by Richard Gottlieb on July 29, 2008 | Comments (0)