Date:01/08/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/08/01/stories/2008080161580900.htm

Tamil Nadu

‘Thiruthamizh’ in trouble as Mattel slaps notice

Shyam Ranganathan

CHENNAI: A Tamil word game ‘Thiruthamizh’ seems to have caught Mattel Inc’s eye after the popular Facebook application Scrabulous.

Developed by Rajakumar Gopalan, a Chennai businessman, ‘Thiruthamizh’ uses the word-building idea popularised by Mattel’s game Scrabble.

The company sent a notice on June 7 to Mr. Gopalan, developer of the board game, to “immediately cease using the board currently being used for [the] game.” The notice also recorded that the website mentioned that the game was a “Tamil variant of Scrabble” and asked all references to Scrabble to be removed from the website.

Mr. Gopalan was given time till June 25 for “compliance with these requisitions,” and to “confirm in writing that [he would] not infringe [their] rights in any manner in the future.”

Mr. Gopalan says he complied with the request and sent a reply to the solicitors, representing Mattel, asking for the details of the company’s copyright. “I do not know what the limits of their rights are. I have built a word game and have used a similar board structure but it is not identical to Scrabble. So I wanted to know what the exact copyright details are,” he says.

But the company is yet to reply, he says. In the meanwhile, he is planning to conduct an international ‘Thiruthamizh’ tournament in the near future to popularise the game.