Hasbro Finally Sues Makers Of Scrabulous; Invokes DMCA To Get It Removed

The latest turn in this saga doesn’t look so good for Scrabulous… Hasbro, the maker of Scrabble, is suing the creators of Scrabulous, the uber-popular Facebook app. In a statement, the company says the suit was filed against Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla in the Southern District of New York, and it adds that it has filed a DMCA takedown notice with Facebook, demanding that the app be removed now. We’ll monitor how fast or whether Facebook complies, but hopefully you don’t have too many unfinished games. Just a guess: Faced with a DMCA takedown notice from a company that has a solid complaint, Facebook will cave (right now it’s still up). Back in January, Hasbro and Mattel first demanded that Facebook deal with the app. It’s clear what’s going on timing-wise: An official version of Scrabble was just launched on Facebook with the help of Electronic Arts (NSDQ: ERTS), and obviously that’s the version Hasbro wants folks playing. Perhaps we need some sort of non-profit “Scrabble-portability” organization to ensure that users can move their in-process games from one to the other. Release.

Update: The full lawsuit is embedded below (RSS readers may have to click through)..read pages 9-11 for the most relevant part…after the jump.