Scrabulous, the Facebook application which bore too close a resemblance to the official board game Scrabble, has finally bitten the dust.

However, Facebook says it didn’t make the final decision to pull the plug – and the game remains active for users outside the United States and Canada.

Facebook had previously ignored cease and desist letters sent by Hasbro, which owns the North American rights to the game and has leased the electronic rights to Electronic Arts.

Hasbro waited until EA launched an official version of the same on Facebook and then launched legal action against Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, the Indian brothers who created the Scrabulous application and raked in tens of thousands in ad revenue thanks to the half a million or so regular users.

According to a Facebook spokesman, Hasbro sent a copy of its lawsuit to Facebook and said the site was responsible for removing the game under online copyright laws. Whether that’s the case will likely not be settled in this incident: Facebook forwarded the complaint to the Agarwalla brothers, who made their own choice to axe the game in North America.

Facebook insists “We’re trying to maintain just being a neutral platform.” That’s probably a smart move: had they pulled the game themselves, it could have established a precedent which could force Facebook to take legal responsibility for all the independently-produced applications accessible through the site.

Users who don’t fancy the EA official Scrabble game (which, ironically, feels a lot less like the actual board game) can still play Scrabulous on the standalone website. That’s actually been running since 2005, but it was clearly the viral nature of Facebook which led to the game’s sudden rise in popularity.

The legal case against the Agarwalla brothers continues. However, they don’t have any assets in the United States, so any judgement would be effectively unenforceable without the co-operation of Indian courts.

Related:

Scrabulous becomes Wordscraper - enough to keep Hasbro happy?

Official Scrabble arrives on Facebook - So what about Scrabulous?

Hasbro sues Scrabulous creators - Facebook app faces deletion

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Entry was posted on Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 at 12:45 pm under Gaming, Legal.  Print This Post

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