The popular but controversial Scrabulous word game has been taken down from Facebook.

Users attempting to access the game in the US and Canada are seeing a message that the game is being taken down "until further notice".

The game, created by Indian developers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, has become the target of legal efforts by Hasbro, which owns the rights to Scrabble.

Scrabulous had become far more popular on Facebook than Scrabble. Scrabulous has some 500,000 daily users, while the official Scrabble game on Facebook is logging some 10,000 users per day.

Scrabulous is a free game, but Hasbro has insisted that it threatens the Scrabble brand.

"Hasbro has an obligation to act appropriately against infringement of our intellectual properties," said general counsel Barry Nagler after the company filed suit last week.

"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."

The company made a filing last week formally requesting that Facebook take Scrabulous down, citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.