Tag Archive: Jayant Agarwalla

Social networking site Facebook has removed the popular game Scrabulous from its North American sites , following legal action from Scrabble maker Hasbro. Facebook users in the U.S. and Canada will simply see a notice that Scrabulous has been disabled until further notice if they try to play the game.

Developed by Indian brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, Scrabulous has been one of the most popular games on Facebook, racking up more than half a million daily users. However, Hasbro has always maintained that the game infringed on its trademarks for Scrabble, and Hasbro recently launched an officially-licensed version of Scrabble for Facebook in conjunction with Electronic Arts—it’s currently available in beta form.

If you’re a Facebook user, the chances are you’ll have come across the Scrabulous application. With more than half a million people using it every day it it’s one of the most popular add-ons for thesocial networking site.   But, the BBC reports, it might have to vanish soon. Hasbro and Mattel, who share globalownership of the Scrabble trademark, claim that Scrabulous infringes their copyright and have asked Facebook to pull the game.   Created by Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, the game is amongFacebook’s ten most popular apps, and the new move has – surprise, surprise – already spawned a Save Scrabulous Facebook group with more than 600 members.   The game has provedso popular that several Scrabble cheat sites have been launched, showing the word combinations possible with the available letters.     There has been speculation that Hasbro and Mattelhave raised the issue because they’re preparing to launch their own online version of Scrabble.