In response to the threat of legal action, Facebook websites in the United States and Canada removed the Scrabble-like game Scrabulous in July.
Game publisher Hasbro sent Facebook a notification of copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Sci-Tech Today.com reported. Facebook introduced Scrabulous in 2005.
Scrabulous creators Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla, and India-based RJ Software are named as the defendants in the suit.
“Hasbro has an obligation to act appropriately against infringement of our intellectual properties,” said Barry Nagler, Hasbro’s general counsel. “We view the Scrabulous application as clear and blatant infringement of our Scrabble intellectual property.”
Hasbro has developed its own Scrabble application for Facebook and is seeking to have Scrabulous removed altogether from the social-networking site.
