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Zynga Issues Cease & Desist to Protect "Ville" Trademark
by Steve Watts, Jan 24, 2011 2:00pm PSTPopular Facebook game developer Zynga has issued a cease and desist order against Blingville, for its game of the same name. GamesIndustry.biz reports that Zynga claims the "ville" suffix infringes on its trademark.
Legal action began in November 2010, but Blingville looks ready to fight it in court, if necessary. The company has filed for a declaratory judgment that the title qualifies as fair use. The company is also requesting that Zynga be made to pay for attorney's fees and other expenses regarding the case.
Zynga is known for its various social games on Facebook, most famously FarmVille, FrontierVille, and CityVille. The name is a valuable one, as last week we heard that CityVille had grown exponentially in only a few months.
Zynga is probably right that hapless users could be confused into thinking Blingville is part of their family of products, but giving the company ownership of such a common word could have legal repercussions on the burgeoning social games market as a whole. We'll keep an eye on the legal dispute.
Comments
throw this case out. we cant "own" word that have existed for centuries.
i waNNA make a game called bookville now
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 12 replies.
While it is true that you can't simply blanket trademark a word like "ville" you can, however, trademark it's usage in specific ways that would protect infringement by another party that's sole purpose is to confuse customers into thinking that they are using a Zynga product.
Example:
I would be fine if I went out and registered CatVille.com and sold cat collars and other cat related accessories because I am not in direct competition to Zynga. No one could reasonably confuse my site for that of a Zynga product.
However, If I registered CatVille.com and started a social media game where people raise cats, and trade/sell those cats to other users via Facebook.com, then I'd have a problem.
See the difference? In the first scenario I could even register "ville" as a trademark of my own as it relates to specific pet merchandise if I had a unique enough usage of the word to warrant a trademark to protect against people trying to snipe customers away from me by starting up fly-by-night "ville" operations.
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