The game Scrabulous is one of the most popular apps on Facebook, having been around for a year and a half, with a fan base of 40,000 and half a million users each day. It’s also one of the most controversial, as it seems to be very close to the game Scrabble (which is relatively new on the social networking site and boasts just 10,000 daily users and 5,000 fan on Facebook), whose rights are owned by Hasbro.
Hasbro has already asked Facebook to remove Scrabulous, and now it’s filed suit against the game’s creators, Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla, as well as their company, for intellectual property theft.
In a statement, Hasbro’s general counsel, Barry Nagler, said:
“Hasbro has an obligation to act appropriately against infringement of our intellectual properties. 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.”
