Scrabulous taken off Facebook UK

Two brothers from India launched Scrabulous on Facebook in 2006

After being taken off Facebook in North America, Scrabulous has now been removed from the UK version of the social networking website.

It's after the company that owns the rights to Scrabble outside the US and Canada threatened to sue the Indian brothers who designed Scrabulous.

Users in the US and Canada were forced to stop playing the game in July.

In the UK, users were able to carry on playing Scrabulous until the weekend when Mattel started its legal action.

A spokesman for Facebook told Newsbeat: "As a result of a complaint filed by Mattel, the copyright and trademark holder of Scrabble everywhere outside the US and Canada, against the developers of Scrabulous, Facebook has restricted access to Scrabulous to users in all countries except India."

Scrabulous history

Brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla designed the Scrabulous application for Facebook in 2006.

It had more than 450,000 users before being disabled in most of the world.

EA Games in North America has launched an official Scrabble game

In a statement Jayant Agarwalla said he found Facebook's decision to pull the game in the UK "astonishing" but was more disappointed with Mattel.

"It surprises us that Mattel chose to direct Facebook to take down Scrabulous without waiting for the [Indian court's] decision," he said.

"Mattel's action speaks volumes about their business practices and respect for the judiciary."

The brothers have now released an alternative Scrabble-like word game called Wordscraper, which isn't affected by Facebook's latest action.

They say they're hoping that with new rules and circular tiles instead of square ones, Wordscraper can withstand legal challenges.

Official scrabble

EA's official version of Scrabble on Facebook was launched in July.

It's designed to let two people play without being online at the same time.

One player makes a move, then waits until the next time his or her rival logs on.

Users can also play on their iPods in the US by downloading an application for $5 (£2.50) and on other mobile devices for $4 (£2).

The company also has the rights to offer it on digital consoles like the Nintendo Wii.