Facebook Told to Take Down Scrabulous

Posted on January 18, 2008

The BBC reports that Mattel and Hasbro have asked Facebook to remove a third party application called Scrabulous. Scrabulous allows Facebook users to interact using a Scrabble type of online game. The BBC says over 500,000 Facebook users were using it daily.

Scrabulous is currently one of Facebook's ten most popular applications - little programs that Facebook members can add to the profiles they maintain on the site.

The request to remove the add-on came from both Hasbro and Mattel because ownership of the Scrabble trademark is split between the two. Hasbro owns rights to the game in the US and Canada while Mattel has rights everywhere else in the world.

Facebook told the PA newswire that it had no comment to make at this stage.

The Scrabulous add-on was not created by Facebook but was built for the site by Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla - software developers based in Calcutta.

Casual games are a huge market and Facebook applications are just one arena where they are played. There are likely numerous Scrabble clones found online but usage of the Facebook application called Scrabulous was large enough to get the attention of the trademark holders Hasbro and Mattel.

Scrabulous later returned in a new form called Lexulous.

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