Due to copyright infringement lawsuits, the game was removed from Facebook in 2008,[2] first for North American users and later worldwide, with the Scrabulous website following suit.

The Scrabulous company was founded by Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, both commerce graduates of St. Xavier's College, Kolkata, India.

According to Anthony Falzone — head of the Fair Use Project at Stanford University — copyright laws do not allow someone to freely copy the particular expression of an idea.

[10] In his article in the Wall Street Journal, Jamin Brophy-Warren has said that Hasbro Inc. has refused to comment on legal matters, while the creators have mentioned informing the company about their site.

[13] The game had been generating advertising revenue of over $25,000 a month for the Agarwalla brothers,[14] however they refused to sell their application to Hasbro, instead requesting a "multiple" of $10 million.

[20][21] In reaction to the news that the Facebook application was in legal jeopardy, two groups made a "SCRABULOUS" music video spoof of the Fergie song "Glamorous."

[24][25] As Hasbro controls the rights to Scrabble for North America with Mattel holding them for the rest of the world,[24] the Facebook application is available only to players outside the United States and Canada.

The suit claimed Scrabulous violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and infringed upon Hasbro's intellectual property rights.

Whilst the game had an appearance overhaul, it still maintained the essential elements of the Scrabulous version including all of its past records, user IDs, and saved information.

Wordscraper is a Scrabble-based word game application available on Facebook, also created by the Agarwalla brothers, which received an influx of people from the closure of Scrabulous in North America.