A potential lawsuit is brewing around the popular Scrabulous online version of Scrabble, which was created in Calcutta in 2005 by two Web-savvy Indian brothers, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, and is available to play for free on Facebook and at the Scrabulous Website.  The site, which has over 3 million registered users, has been threatened with legal action by Hasbro and Mattel, the two companies that own the rights to the original Scrabble board game(Hasbro has North American rights, Mattel has the rest of the world).  In the summer of 2007 two companies, Electronic Arts and RealNetworks, signed deals with Hasbro and Mattel respectively to create licensed online versions of Scrabble.

Hasbro, Mattel and the Agarwalla brothers are currently involved in discussions in an attempt to avoid a costly legal battle.  The fact that the Scrabulous online game uses an identical (though virtual) game board with the same double and triple word score bonus squares and even the same color scheme would appear to argue that Hasbro and Mattel's copyright and trademark rights are indeed being infringed, but the precedents for this sort of online appropriation of copyrighted material are not all clear.  The Agarwalla brothers created the site as a free online place to play their favorite game; the question becomes whether their creation of an easy way to play the game online makes Scrabulous their "creation." 

Meanwhile Real Networks has introduced a Scrabble by Mattel game on Facebook where it is supposed to be played only by individuals from outside North America (though there is no enforcement mechanism).  According to the New York Times online players at Facebook preferred Scrabulous to Scrabble by Mattel by a wide margin (600,000 to 2,000) during the most recent 24-hour period surveyed.