Jul 30, 2008 8:51 am US/Eastern
'Scrabulous' Online Game Pulled After Lawsuit
Facebook Game Attracted Half-Million Users
PAWTUCKET, R.I. (WBZ) ―
A knockoff of the word game Scrabble has been pulled from Facebook following a lawsuit by Pawtucket-based Hasbro, which owns the North American rights to the word game.
"Scrabulous" creators, brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, said they agreed to suspend the game in the United States and Canada, but the brothers say they'll continue to pursue their legal defense.
Last week, Hasbro sued the brothers. In addition, Hasbro asked Facebook to block the program. Now Facebook has done that, saying the Agarwalls brothers asked them to do so.
In the year since Facebook began letting outside developers write Web programs that users can plug into their personal profile pages, Scrabulous has become one of the most popular applications, with an estimated 500,000 users.
Earlier this month, there was an official version of Scrabble issued online. But that hasn't attracted nearly as many users as Scrabulous.
(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
