Facebook is Urged to Scrap Game

Jan 16, 05:56 PM

THE makers of Scrabble have asked Facebook to pull the Scrabulous game from its website, it emerged yesterday.

Toy giants Hasbro and Mattel wrote jointly to the social networking site's US head office calling for the application to be pulled due to copyright issues.

Scrabulous, a miniature online form of the popular board game, was created by a third party firmbased in India, according to Mattel UK.

Hasbro owns the rights to Scrabble in the US and Canada. Mattel owns the rights elsewhere in the world.

A statement released by Mattel UK last night 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."

Facebook last year overtook MySpace and Bebo to be named the most popular social networking site in the UK.