SiliconRepublic.com Ireland's Technology News Service

The owners of Scrabble in various jurisdictions around the world, Mattel and Hasbro are in court with software developers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla over distribution rights.

It is believed Mattel wants to deploy its own version of Scrabble to the social networking world.

As the Facebook phenomenon spreads, the Scrabulous application has become one of its most popular items.

However, once Mattel and Hasbro became aware of it, pressure mounted to have the game removed.

The Agarwalla brothers are understood to have subsequently released a modified version of Scrabulous called WordScraper, which has new rules and circular titles.

Initially, the game was blocked in the US and Canada, but the ban appears to have spread worldwide with the exception of India.

In related news, Facebook today announced that it now has over 100 million ‘friends’ worldwide.

In a post marking the milestone, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said: “100 million people around the world are now using Facebook. This is a really gratifying moment for us because it means a lot that you have decided that Facebook is a good, trusted place for you to share your lives with your friends. So we just wanted to take this moment to say, ‘thanks’.

“We spend all our time here trying to build the best possible product that enables you to share and stay connected, so the fact that we're growing so quickly all over the world is very rewarding,” he said.

By John Kennedy