Scrabulous blocked worldwide

SCRABBLE CLONE SCRABULOUS, which has already been pulled from Facebook in the US and Canada has now been banned throughout the world.

Facebook has announced that it was forced to disable after one of Scrabble's rights owners, Mattel made a formal removal request and the developers of Scrabulous took no action to fight back.

The only place you can play Scrabulous is in India, where its developers live and where Mattel has filed an IP lawsuit.

According to AP, Facebook isn't blocking Scrabulous there for now because it is a matter for the Indian courts.

Facebook had hoped Mattel would go away after Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, the brothers in Calcutta who created Scrabulous, agreed to withdraw the program in the US and Canada.

However when Mattel started to threaten the Agarwalla brothers on a global scale the pair got miffed and refused to withdraw the product.

The Agarwallas, meanwhile, have released an alternative Scrabble-like word game with called Wordscraper. It has new rules and circular tiles instead of square ones. µ

L'INQ

AP