Scrabulous creators sued by Hasbro

The suit comes a week after Electronic Arts released an official, Hasbro-backed online Scrabble game for Facebook in North America.

Toy and game manufacturers Hasbro and Mattel – which share ownership of the Scrabble trademark – first asked Facebook in January to remove Scrabulous from its website.

Hasbro yesterday submitted the request to Facebook again, this time as a demand backed by US law regarding internet copyright infringement.

In addition, Hasbro also filed a lawsuit against Scrabulous and the Agarwalla brothers in federal district court in New York.

"Our hope and expectation is that the parties can resolve their disagreements in a manner that satisfies the parties, that continues to offer a great experience to gamers and that doesn't discourage other developers from using our platform to share creativity and test new ideas," Facebook told the AFP in a statement.

Scrabulous.com was launched by brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla in India in 2005 and has since become hugely popular as a free application on Facebook. More than 500,000 people reportedly play the online word game daily.