The immensely popular online game has been taken off Facebook, as Hasbro, the company which holds the rights for Scrabble in North America, has sued the Indian brothers that developed Scrabulous as well as their software company.

Hasbro also previously asked Facebook to take the game off the social networking site, but the company refused to do so at that time. It seems that it were the Indian brothers Rajat and and Jayant Agarwall that determined Facebook to give up the game. The two Scrabulous creators might have done this to protect the site that made their game popular until a final decision in the copyright infringement suit is reached.

According to estimates, about 500,000 people played the Scrabble copy each day. Many of them have rushed to sign petitions asking Facebook to give them back their favorite online toy. Scrabulous generated revenue thanks to ads that were displayed during gameplay.

Last week, Hasbro has released its own online version of the word game, which was developed together with Electronic Arts. Scrabble Beta, as it is called, has managed to reach an audience of only 15,000 players a day.

At this moment, Scrabulous can still be played by Facebook users living outside the USA and Canada, as well as on the game's website, Scrabulous.com.

The two Indian brothers will have a hard time convincing the authorities that Scrabuluos does not infringe Hasbro's copyright. On the other hand, it will be interesting to see whether people will switch to Scrabble Beta, or will just ignore the game.