The Legal Art Of Backing Off

Posted by Eriq Gardner

Just a couple of updates to some stories we've been following.

It first appeared that Facebook had decided to shut down Scrabulous after Hasbro sued the makers of the widget. But it turns out that Facebook has taken a cautious approach, forwarding Hasbro's take-down notice to Scrabulous, who decided to pull the plug on their own to the popular application. So no need to read any implications in how social-networking sites are responding to DMCA threats from this...just yet.

In other news, the lawyer who sued his hometown newspaper for fraud after they cut news staff has dropped the suit. Seems like he made his point, and after meeting with the newspaper's management, he's in the process of writing an opinion piece about the state of the newspaper industry for the same newspaper.