Hasbro fires off legal letters over Scrabulous

Hasbro Inc, which owns the US and Canadian rights to Scrabble, has asked Facebook to remove its online version "Scrabulous", Reuters reports.

A spokeswoman for Mattel in Britain, which owns the Scrabble rights to the rest of the world, confirmed: "Letters have been sent to Facebook in the United States regarding the Scrabulous application. Mattel values its intellectual property and actively protects its brands and trademarks."

She added: "As Mattel owns the rights to the Scrabble trademark outside the United States and Canada, we are currently reviewing our position regarding other countries."

Scrabulous, which is apparently one of Facebook's ten most popular applications, was developed by Calcutta-based software developers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla. ®