NEW YORK - HASBRO Inc said on Monday it has dropped its lawsuit against a pair of Indian brothers who created a popular online word game, Scrabulous, which the US company claimed infringed on its Scrabble game.

Hasbro, in a statement, said it had withdrawn the lawsuit filed in a US federal court here against RJ Softwares, the Kolkata-based company owned by brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla.

The Hasbro statement said it is 'pleased that RJ Softwares has made the necessary modifications to 'Wordscraper' and 'Lexulous', which Hasbro asserted were infringements upon the Scrabble intellectual property rights.

'Based on these modifications, we have agreed to withdraw our lawsuit.' Hasbro filed suit against RJ Softwares on July 25 over Scrabulous, which had attracted hundreds of thousands of players as an application on Facebook.

The brothers pulled Scrabulous from the social network following the lawsuit and relaunched it under the names 'Wordscraper' and 'Lexulous'. In a brief statement, RJ Softwares said the settlement 'resolves disputes concerning Scrabulous, previously offered by RJ Softwares, as well as Lexulous, and Wordscraper that are currently offered by RJ Softwares'.

Hasbro owns the Scrabble trademark and copyright in the United States and Canada while toy-maker Mattel owns the rights for the rest of the world.

Both Hasbro and Mattel have since released authorised online versions of Scrabble. -- AFP