Hasbro has been making strides to enter the casual gaming sphere, partnering with none other than Electronic Arts to make its big break on PC and consoles. You can imagine then that the board game company has been eyeing an unlicensed online clone of America's Good Time Game, Scrabble, with a disapproving look. Indeed, Hasbro is now officially bringing the makers of popular Facebook application Scrabulous to court for (you guessed it) infringement of intellectual property. Hasbro's lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, also wants Facebook to pull Scrabulous from their site in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Hasbro Digital Media's Mark Blecher explains to the New York Times:

"Hasbro has always had the same two priorities. One is to offer a great playing authentic game for fans and the second is to protect our intellectual property. This was theft of I.P., plain and simple."

Facebook app development has proven lucrative thanks to potential advertising revenue from the social networking site's scores of users, and Scrabulous is certainly reaping the benefits. Developers Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla of RJ Softwares reportedly pocket $25,000 USD monthly from online advertising, though the siblings insist their product did not come about solely for profit. Scrabulous first emerged on Facebook back in May 2007, though it had its roots online since August 2005.  The Agarwallas related to the NYT earlier this March that they just wanted to play Scrabble with other Facebook users when no other alternative was available. At that time, Hasbro had already threatened legal action against Scrabulous, though the company hoped for a resolution that wouldn't force the game to go offline for good. In other words, Hasbro was looking to purchase Scrabulous off of the developers, but apparently no settlement came about.

Hasbro and EA launched their own official version of Scrabble for Facebook earlier this month, but it's currently not enjoying the same level of popularity which Scrabulous does. The unlicensed app enjoys the patronage of at least half a million Facebook members on a regular basis, while Hasbro's version has scored around 8000 active users. No doubt being first to tap into the Facebook crowd proved to be a big boon for the unofficial version, as there's less incentive for existing members to drop their lists of Scrabulous contacts to move over to the licensed edtion.