Zynga attempting to enforce 'ville' trademark
Rival game Blingville fights back against cease and desist orders
Social network gaming outfit Zynga has requested cease and desist orders against developer and game Blingville, claiming its use of the letter combination 'ville' entails trademark infringement.
Zynga began action against Blingville last November, with Blingville claiming this will soon evolve into a full trademark infringement suit.
Last week, Blingville filed for a declaratory judgement stating that its game's title constituted a "fair use" of the trademark.
Zynga's claim "adversely affects Blingville and will continue to do so until this Court makes a determination of Blingville's absolute right to use the trademark name 'Blingville' in connection with its social networking computer game."
The declaratory judgement request also demands that "Zynga be ordered to pay Blingville's attorneys' fees, costs and other expenses incurred as a result of this controversy."
Zynga has previously been on the receiving end of trademark infringement disputes, in cases concerning both the name and the content of its Facebook hit Mafia Wars.
Still, it strikes me that imitation is back up to 80's levels in the industry (I've seen Maxsplosion and Bullistic on iTunes over the last couple of days alone).
But I agree Andrew; plagiarism does seem particularly rife in the industry at the moment. I guess most of that is because of fast turnaround and relatively un-policed downloadable gaming.
WeirdVille, Frontier Ville, Dot Ville, etc (Object +Ville)
Just because Farmville was successful does not mean, Zynga have carte blanche monopoly on the Ville name, even on the argument of protecting ones IP. Whereas if the new game+Ville was a very close farming game, then there may be a tenous argument of slight confusion between the two companies.
Can you say "HypocrisyVille"?
Ridiculous.
This, unlike a lot of trademark cases we read about, seems to me to be not at all unreasonable, and deserving of the opinion of a court.
Zynga has a ton of money to burn to destroy all competition, so if they can't buy you, they'll file some kind of lawsuit to shoot your costs up.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Raimonds Zigurs on 26th January 2011 1:05am