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Hasbro drops 'Scrabulous' lawsuit

Wildly popular game was pulled from Facebook after the toy maker filed its copyright and trademark lawsuit against the unauthorized online game's creators.

Steven Musil Night Editor / News
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Steven Musil
2 min read

Hasbro is apparently content to call its contest with the makers of Scrabulous a draw.

The toy maker on Friday withdrew its copyright and trademark lawsuit filed against the creators of the ad-supported online application, according to court documents cited in an Associated Press report.

A game of Scrabulous on Facebook. Scrabulous

The game, which rose to fame when its creators turned it into an embeddable Facebook application, was a word game that resembled the classic board game Scrabble. The game boasted an astonishing half-million daily users on Facebook, but was removed from the social-networking site not long after the lawsuit was filed in July.

The game manufacturer, which owns the rights to Scrabble in the United States and Canada, filed the suit against India-based brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, and their company, RJ Softwares. The suit had asked Facebook to pull the game, citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and asked the Agarwallas to close their Scrabulous.com site.

The brothers subsequently modified Scrabulous' design and points system, and relaunched it as Wordscraper in the United States and Canada within days of its initial demise. The Scrabulous Web site relaunched as Lexulous.com in September.

The Scrabulous site launched in 2005 and the game was added to Facebook in 2007. But a Hasbro representative told CNET News in July that the company waited, "in deference to the fans," to file its lawsuit until it launched its official Scrabble Facebook app earlier in July. That version was created by Electronic Arts and is used by a mere 8,900 daily users.

Hasbro did not immediately return a message left seeking comment.