IT was inevitable that the toy-maker Hasbro would end up in court over the very Scrabble-like Facebook application Scrabulous.

Hasbro filed a suit in a New York court against two brothers Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla – the creators of Scrabulous – and RJ Softwares.

The lawsuit is not unlike dozens of others – most recently and most famously the US$1 billion claim by Viacom and others against Google’s YouTube – where ‘new’ technology creators are accused of theft. Mainly being accused of stealing intellectual property for profit.

Hasbro has had its eye on the fabulously popular Scrabulous for some time. The company recently released its own Facebook version of Scrabble – and clearly thought the time right to pursue the Indian brothers more vigorously (it had already sent cease and desist letters.)

Hasbro also said it had sent notice to Facebook requesting that Scrabulous be removed from the social networking site immediately.

The legal tussle is expected to go on for some time, not least because the Agarwalla brothers live in India. But depending on how Facebook reacts, it seems the social networking site could be drawn deep into the suit.

“We view the Scrabulous application as clear and blatant infringement of our 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,” Hasbro said in a statement.

RJ Softwares was named in the suit as it had claimed in marketing material on its web site to have played some role in the launch of Scrabulous on Facebook.