Hasbro withdraws suit against Scrabulous creator

NEW YORK, Dec 15 (Reuters) - Hasbro Inc (HAS.N) said on Monday that it agreed to withdraw a lawsuit against Scrabulous creator RJ Softwares, after the Indian information technology firm made changes to its Lexulous and Wordscraper online games.

In an emailed statement, Hasbro said the agreement "provides people in the U.S. and Canada with a choice of different games and also avoids potentially lengthy and costly litigation."

The toy maker, which is also known for its Transformers and Playskool brands, declined to comment beyond the statement.

Hasbro had filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York earlier this year, saying Scrabulous infringed on the intellectual property rights of the popular board game Scrabble, to which Hasbro owns the rights in North America.

Hasbro, which had also sent a note to Facebook earlier this year asking it to remove the Scrabulous application, decided to file the lawsuit after launching a version of Scrabble on the social networking site.

Scrabulous was removed from Facebook, but its creators launched Lexulous, which Hasbro said still had similarities to Scrabble.

Hasbro's suit had named Scrabulous creators and brothers Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla, as well as their company RJ Softwares, as defendants.

Hasbro's shares were down 17 cents or 0.7 percent to $26.87 in afternoon trade on the New York Stock Exchange. (Reporting by Aarthi Sivaraman, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)