Zynga trains legal sights on PyramidVille
Social game publisher believes that the "Ville" trademark has been violated
Zynga has filed a lawsuit in California District Court against Kobojo over alleged trademark infringement. The leading social game publisher is singling out PyramidVille.
Zynga says that their "Ville" games, such as FishVille, PetVille, CityVille and FarmVille, should preempt other companies from using the suffix on their own social games. Zynga wants preliminary and permanent injunctions against the use of the PyramidVille name and damages no less than three times the profits the game has produced.
"There can be no question that defendant was fully aware of Zynga's success and Zynga's Ville family of games prior to selecting the name for its similarly themed game," reads the complaint by Zynga. "For example, on information and belief, more than one of Defendant's principles had installed and played various games within Zynga's Ville Family of Games prior to the release of PyramidVille."
Kobojo was founded in 2008 and the studio launched PyramidVille on Facebook in 2011, followed by PyramidVille Adventures for mobile. Zynga said it gave Kobojo a chance to change the name of their game, but the French company refused.
Notably, Zynga does not own the trademark for "Ville" that it is suing Kobojo for. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office suspended Zynga's application for the trademark recently.
Zynga has in the past also been involved in lawsuits with Night Owl Games for its Dungeonville game, as well as Blingville. Both actually preemptively sued Zynga to ensure that a court would declare that its games do not in fact infringe on Zynga's.