Hasbro and Mattel owners of Scrabble have asked Facebook to remove the
Scrabulous application under claims that it infringes copyright.
Scrabulous is one of Facebook's more popular applications and has over 600,000 daily users. It was developed by an Indian software company who reportedly approached Hasbro with no reply before launching in Facebook.
The statemenet released by Mattel UK said, "Letters have been sent to Facebook in the US regarding the Scrabulous application. Mattel values its intellectual property and actively protects its brands and trademarks. As Mattel owns the rights to the Scrabble trademark outside the US and Canada, we are currently reviewing our position regarding other countries."
Including a "Save Scrabulous" Facebook Group, there are also such groups as "
Help I cannot stop playing Scrabulous," "
Scrabulous is crack and I am a junkie," "
Scrabulous Anonymous" and "
Every time that Scrabulous has trouble loading, a little part of me dies."
At the time of writing, the
Save Scrabulous group has over 5,100 members. One of the group members says, "Forget global warming, screw the whales - THIS is my cause!!"
It is certain that fans of Scrabulous will try to create a viral movement to save the online game - many users make the point that they have only
bought the Scrabble board game after getting hooked on Scrabulous.
The
Scrabulous Group has over 36,000 members.