Mattel has teamed up with Hasbro to sue the creators of Scrabulous, one of Facebook’s most popular applications.

The two companies, which between them own the rights to the board game, claim that the online version developed by brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla infringes their copyright. Hasbro asked Facebook to take down Scrabulous – which attracts over 600,000 daily users and gives the brothers $25,000 of advertising a month.

Why would you want to turn your fans into enemies? Why not just buy the company? Why not advertise the Scrabble board game on the Scrabulous pages?

The rush from the toy makers has definitely not helped, they’ve seemed to have forgotten a number of things:

1. There is such a thing as bad publicity.
2. Facebook Scrabulous users love the game, and they are angry for losing it. It is not likely that these people will buy Mattel/Habro toys for friends and relatives.
3. There already are more than 55,000 members in a Save Scrabulous Facebook Group and talk of boycott of Mattel and Hasbro
4. Realize that Scrabulous turns people on to Scrabble and other word games and creates opportunity for Mattel/Hasbro.