Scrabulous returns on Facebook with a new name

HOUSTON: A popular online word game created by two Indian brothers that was yanked off the social networking website, a week after a lawsuit was filed against the siblings by an American toymaker who owns the rights to Scrabble, is back again but with a new name.

The name change to "wordscraper" from "scrabulous" has been implemented so as to help developers Rajat (27), and Jayant Agarwalla (22) to avoid getting into the trap of copyright and trademark laws.

The game has been released with a different look from Scrabulous and new features, which taken together should help the game steer clear of copyright lawsuits.

Instead of the squares, the board is made up of circles now and the titles look more like bubbles. The design and type that bit off Scrabble is gone too.

But Wordscraper advances the Scrabble game in a significant way, allowing one to fully customise his own board, determine the shape of the playing space and the point values on it. One can recreate a typical Scrabble board or make something up completely new.

Scrabulous had became one of the most popular activities on Facebook after its launch in 2006 and is believed to have over 2.5 million registered users.

The Agarwalla brothers decided to go for a name change after Hasbro, the owners of Scrabble's North American rights filed a federal lawsuit.

The suit came less than two weeks after the release of an authorised version of Scrabble for Facebook which drew a lukewarm response with just 10,000 users.