Now Scrabulous has been pulled in the UK and Australia (at least) following a "take down notice" sent to Facebook from Mattel. Hasbro owns Scrabble in the U.S. and Canada, but in the rest of the world, it is owned by a subsidiary of Mattel. This would explain why Scrabuluous has been available in other countries until now. According to Inside Facebook, one of the Agarwalla brothers issued a statement saying:

Mattel itself had approached the Indian Courts in February 2008, seeking an order for taking down Scrabulous from Facebook and other servers. The Hon’ble High Court has reserved judgment in this matter after hearing both parties. It surprises us that Mattel chose to direct Facebook to take down Scrabulous without waiting for the Hon’ble High Court’s decision. Mattel’s action speaks volumes about their business practices and respect for the judiciary.

We now await the decision of the Hon’ble High Court and shall accordingly decide our future course of action with regard to Scrabulous.

For the time being, it appears Scrabulous fans can still enjoy the game at its website. Those hoping to play it via Facebook, will be greeted with a "restricted" message.

Fans of the game are in an uproar, and do not care for the official Scrabble app launched through Entertainment Arts. They want their Scrabulous! I wonder what Chuck Woolery thinks about the whole situation.

If users try to access the application they will see this message."Scrabulous is disabled for US and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like to stay informed about developments in this matter, please click here."

If users click on the link they are taken to a page requesting them to sign up for email alerts about the status of Scrabulous.

Hasbro, the rights holder for Scrabble, sued the creators of Scrabulous last week and sent Facebook a DMCA take down notice. A Facebook spokesman forwarded the notice to Scrabulous. Creators Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla removed the application last night in the U.S. and Canada.

Facebook says it will not get involved in the Scrabulous Hasbro suite. It says it wants to remain a neutral platform.

"We view the Scrabulous application as clear and blatant infringement of our Scrabble intellectual property, and we are pursuing this legal action in accordance with the interests of our shareholders, and the integrity of the Scrabble brand," Barry Nagler, Hasbro’s general counsel, said last week.

Hasbro licensee Electronic Arts launched its version of Scrabble on Facebook this month and it currently has over 14,000 daily users.

Hasbro says it will launch more of its games on social networking sites later this year.

Scrabulous has more than half a million players on Facebook while Hasbro licensee Electronic Arts launched its version of Scrabble on the social network this month has just over 8,000 players.

Hasbro has also sent a DMCA take down notice to Facebook, requesting that the social networking site remove the Scrabulous application from the site.

"Hasbro has an obligation to act appropriately against infringement of our intellectual properties," said Barry Nagler, Hasbro’s general counsel, in a statement. "We view the Scrabulous application as clear and blatant infringement of our Scrabble intellectual property, and we are pursuing this legal action in accordance with the interests of our shareholders, and the integrity of the Scrabble brand."

Hasbro has taken previous legal action against Scrabulous. Mattel owns the Scrabble brand outside of North America and has sent letters to Facebook asking the site to remove the Scrabulous application.

The suit was filed in the Southern District of New York today and names Scrabulous creators, Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwall, along with their company RJ Softwares as the defendants.

Hasbro says it plans to launch more of its games on social networking sites later this year.

"Hasbro and EA have worked diligently to provide a great game play experience on Facebook, and we are confident that fans of the game will welcome a genuine experience highlighted by top of the line graphics, strong technical support, and of course, classic Scrabble game play," said Mark Blecher, General Manager, Hasbro Digital Media and Gaming.

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Although one hugely popular app on Facebook, the Scrabulous game, has been under attack from Scrabble’s trademark owners, VideoEgg has about 150 applications participating in its ad network. Since the product’s launch last August, $1.5 million in ad revenue "is a testament to VideoEgg’s ability to enable developers to monetize their content," company CEO Matt Sanchez said in a statement.

Facebook has been trying to broaden its appeal by opening a development platform to third party application developers. In turn, those developers sought options to monetize their apps, leading to other entrepreneurs looking for ways to serve that demand.

Considering the appeal of apps like Scrabulous and some others in VideoEgg’s ad network, Adam Ostrow at Mashable thinks the $1.5 million sounds a little low.

"The bottom line is that $1.5 million in revenue over 5 months for some of Facebook’s top applications simply does not seem like much, especially when you consider that MySpace is estimated to pull in $800 million of revenue this year," said Ostrow.

One forecast predicts significant growth for online video advertising, with eMarketer calling for a jump in that revenue from $775 million in 2007 to $4.3 billion by 2010. That could be a rising tide to lift VideoEgg and others over the next two years.

And they want it taken down.

Of course, Facebookers are plenty upset about that, and are rallying behind the game.

The app, according to BBC, pulls in 500,000 daily users, and has spawned Scrabulous cheat websites so players can consult an automatic word-generator.

Classic Scrabble players join me in saying that’s just wrong. If you don’t know any words, you lose. That’s how it goes. And that’s what dictionaries and challenges are for. They’re probably in there looking for how to spell "woot" which is suddenly legal, thanks to Webster.

(By the way, it’s not always good to follow Noah Webster’s and his successors’ lead, you know. Back in the day, after he removed the Us from words like colour and behaviour, he proposed the spelling of women be changed to "wimmin" like it sounds. Thankfully, he was overruled. Unfortunately, nobody stood up to "woot." But I will make a stand.)

It’s unusual that two different companies would cry copyright infringement over the same product, but in this case, Hasbro has US and Canada rights, and Mattel has the rights everywhere else. Obviously somebody leveraged a legal loophole at some point, but that won’t matter as hypocrisy has no place in legal proceedings.

Facebookers, as has often happened, are incensed and misguided as to why, and are scrambling to keep their beloved online past time just because they love it so much, whatever the legal rights of the copyright owners.

Nevertheless, Hasbro and Mattel are pretty set on squashing the game, which was developed by Calcutta-based Indian brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, who apparently have never heard of intellectual property. Otherwise, they may have worked a bit harder to name the game something other than an obvious derivative of the original.

Then again, it may not have spread like it did. Critics have suggested that the two toy companies buy or license the game outright, or hire the brothers rather than go the heavy-handed legal route. However, it really is a golden opportunity to smack an infringer and take his idea and rebrand it properly. Think of how much they’ll save in research in development – thanks Rajat and Jayant!