Hasbro Files Suit Against Logophile's Delight Scrabulous

Hasbro Files Suit Against Logophile's Delight Scrabulous

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By Brian Kraemer, ChannelWeb

3:48 PM EDT Thu. Jul. 24, 2008

Hasbro has filed a lawsuit against the makers of the popular Facebook application Scrabulous a Southern District of New York court. Developed by bothers Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla, Scrabulous quickly became one of the most popular applications on the social networking site after its launch in July 2006. In the suit, Hasbro claims that the application infringes on its intellectual property rights.

In addition to the Agarwalla brothers, their company, RJ Softwares, is listed as a defendant in the case, according to Reuters.

The toy maker also sent notice to social networking site Facebook, asking the company to remove the application from its United States and Canadian versions of the site as quickly as possible. This is the second time Hasbro has asked Facebook to remove the application.

After seeing the popularity of the Scrabulous application on Facebook, Hasbro launched a Scrabble application to compete with RJ Softwares offering. Scrabulous remains a more popular application.

"We view the Scrabulous application as clear and blatant infringement of our Scrabble intellectual property, and we are pursuing this legal action in accordance with the interests of our shareholders, and the integrity of the Scrabble brand," Hasbro's General Counsel Barry Nagler said in a statement.

Hasbro owns the rights to Scrabble in North America while Mattel owns the rights to the popular board game for logophiles worldwide.