Scrabulous  - an unofficial, online version of Scrabble – launched in 2007 on the social networking site Facebook had over 1,000,000 monthly users.  The owners with the rights to the game in the U.S. and Canada, Hasbro, filed suit in federal court in New York City against Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla, the Calcutta-based brothers who created Scrabulous.  Mattel, which owns the Scrabble rights in the rest of the world, had earlier issued cease-and-desist letters to the Agarwalla brothers, but they ignored them.  Facebook has now taken the application off of Facebook in North America

A new application has been started on Facebook – Save Scrabulous!  Reportably with more than 10,000 signatures.  The Agarwalla brothers have fought back and introduced a new word game called ‘Wordscraper’ in January, which is already gaining popularity from Facebook users.

The question is was this a sensible business decision from Hasbro?  Missing the opportunity to capitalize on Scrabulous’s success in the Social Networking world, which all businesses want to embrace, and allienating Scrabulous fans.

What do you think?

Will you miss Scrabulous?