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Having failed in January to persuade Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla to remove the application voluntarily, Hasbro said it was left with no choice but to turn to the courts.

"Hasbro has an obligation to act appropriately against infringement of our intellectual properties," said Barry Nagler, Hasbro's general counsel, in a statement. "We view the Scrabulous application as clear and blatant infringement of our

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Scrabble intellectual property, and we are pursuing this legal action in accordance with the interests of our shareholders, and the integrity of the Scrabble brand."

In January, the Jayant Agarwalla revealed that the application boasted 2.3 million active users and was generating more than $25,000 per month from advertising.

That is cash that Hasbro is now after. Having signed an exclusive licensing deal with games maker Electronics Arts late last year, it launched its own online Scrabble game, though only in the US and Canada. Elsewhere the rights to the game are held by Mattel, whose own Scrabble website has yet to offer a full version of the game.

Some 45,000 Facebook users have now joined the Save Scrabulous group, set up after Hasbro issued its cease and desist request.

Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla have yet to comment on the lawsuit.