It was not quite a year ago when I signed up for a Facebook account and became addicted. Then, for a while, it got a bit boring. Everyone was sending me these silly little applications to install, like a garden to put flowers in and a wall to post pictures and videos to. Then came Scrabulous. After that came Bogglific. I play both regularly and enjoy them immensely.  I especially like Bogglific which I can play whenever I like against anyone else in the world who happens to be on-line, as well as challenging my Facebook friends.

Apparently, Hasbro doesn't like these online take-offs of their popular board games and is trying to shut them down. Scrabulous is putting up a fight but it looks like Bogglific is going under. This is the notice that was put up on the Bogglific home page in Facebook this evening:

Bogglific to Close Down :-(

Hasbro, Inc. has sent a DMCA notification notice to Facebook regarding Bogglific. They claim it violates their trademark, and violates copyright over the Boggle rules.

I'm no lawyer, and can't see how it violates copyright. But I have neither the time nor the money to fight this, and Facebook has given me a grace period of 48 hours to shut the application down voluntarily.

You might be interested to know Scrabulous is in the same boat, but they have the resources to fight their battle. Hopefully they will be successful.

Sorry, guys. It was great fun while it lasted. You're a fantastic bunch, and it's a pity that Hasbro doesn't realise that Bogglific helped its Boggle sales by introducing all your Facebook friends to the game, not hindered it. That is sadly how the litigious US works.

Note that the Bogglific forum will be deleted by Facebook, so you may wish to post further discussions to the Bogglific Addicts group (which is not run by me.)

Your developer and friend,
Roger Nesbitt

I am so sad! I don't know what I'm going to do with myself!! All this spare time I'll have on my hands now to do the laundry and clean the dishes. It's just not fair.

Of course, on the other hand, I did wonder how the developers that wrote these programs got away with it for so long. It was really only a matter of time before the big companies decided that it was time to protect their intellectual property (IP). *Sigh*. Guess I'll have to go find some other little applications to waste time on. This time I might check first to make sure the IP isn't owned by someone else before getting so emotionally attached!