Zynga Threatening To Sue Blingville Over Trademark Infringement
January 24, 2011 | By Eric Caoili 14 comments More:
Zynga, maker of popular social games like FarmVille and CityVille, has sent several cease and desist letters to Blingville, accusing the independent developer of trademark infringement.
In a complaint submitted by Blingville to a West Virginia U.S. District Court and posted by Techdirt, the Harpers Ferry-based developer said it began receiving cease and desist notices from Zynga last November. BlingVille also claimed Zynga has threatened legal action if it failed to comply.
Zynga has released the most popular applications on Facebook in the past two years, collecting over 295 million monthly active users on the social network and publishing six games with "Ville" in their titles: CityVille, FarmVille, FishVille, FrontierVille, PetVille, and YoVille. It's preparing a virtual currency reward program for its players called RewardVille, too.
Blingville, which has a self-titled game on Facebook under public beta testing, claims another company, Overtime Apps, registered a Blingville.com domain name in October 2004 and filed a trademark registration for the title in November 2010. Overtime Apps then "assigned all of its right title and interest in and to the 'Blingville' name and trademark application to BlingVille".
"Zynga does not own and has not registered or applied for any trademark registrations at the USPTO for any trademark rights in the word 'Blingville' or any word marks similar thereto," argued the studio in its complaint. "Blingville's use of the trademark 'Blingville' in its social networking game constitutes a fair use of the trademark."
The independent developer added, "Zynga has asserted, and Blingville denies, that Blingville's use of the trademark name 'Blingville' in its social networking game violates the [Lanham (Trademark) Act] with respect to Zynga or any of Zynga's trademarks or its social networking games containing the letter combination of 'ville'."
Though Zynga has only threatened to file a lawsuit, Blingville is asking the court to declare that its use of the Blingville trademark name does not infringe any of the FarmVille maker's trademarks. It's also asking the court to order Zynga to pay its "attorneys' fees, costs, and expenses incurred as a result of [the] controversy created by the cease and desist letters."
[Update: Zynga's deputy general counsel Jay Monahan provided Gamasutra with the following statement: "We regret that BlingVille LLC has chosen to move forward with a social game called BlingVille despite our advance notice to them of our rights.
Use of the name 'BlingVille' is an obvious attempt to capitalize on the fame and goodwill associated with Zynga's family of "ville" games which includes FarmVille and CityVille. We are prepared to take all necessary steps to protect our intellectual property rights."]
This sort of corporate arrogance and assertion of that arrogance is becoming increasingly commonplace nowadays. I seriously hope this gets nipped in the bud soon, or the future looks rather bleak. (Of course, it looks bleak for many other reasons... but this doesn't help.)
And this is following Zynga actually directly copying other farm based games in creating Farmville?
I understand that a wave of poorly made social games with "-ville" in the name could damage the credibility of Zynga's existing -ville games, but this would be no different than the excellent Roller Coaster Tycoon versus all the awful business-sim "tycoon" games. Also, if this BlingVille is successful, it's probably free advertising for Zynga anyway, since people will look at the game name rather than the publisher/developer name. Thus, I can see why a cease-and-desist could be in their best interest, but I doubt that Zynga can make the case stick, especially with so much history in game naming schemes.
I will be filing a friend of the court brief against Zynga in this case. Calling Zynga's conduct anything but absolutely disgusting is plain wrong
Execution on the various social graphs including Facebook is ubiquitous. Every properly executed product uses social channels for promotion and certainly every properly executed game is a social game. Zynga doesnt own the property of other developers on all ville games. This aggression will not stand
This aggression will not stand. Do not go down this road Zynga. You do not own the free speech, the pursuit of happiness or property of 7 billion people of humanity
On should not that even in the facebook ecosystem, just a part of the social graph, games with the ending of city and life, like Train City, Paradise Life, Sorority Life, Crime City comes from different developers and even Playdom didnt start trying to take a dump on people
LOL @ Zynga claiming to own a naming scheme centuries old. Jay Monahan you're a scumbag
However, if you make a game called Joinville, then yes, you might get in trouble with them.
I understand that a wave of poorly made social games with "-ville" in the name could damage the credibility of Zynga's existing -ville games, but this would be no different than the excellent Roller Coaster Tycoon versus all the awful business-sim "tycoon" games. Also, if this BlingVille is successful, it's probably free advertising for Zynga anyway, since people will look at the game name rather than the publisher/developer name. Thus, I can see why a cease-and-desist could be in their best interest, but I doubt that Zynga can make the case stick, especially with so much history in game naming schemes.
Crappy, predatory behavior by Zynga.
I will be filing a friend of the court brief against Zynga in this case. Calling Zynga's conduct anything but absolutely disgusting is plain wrong
Execution on the various social graphs including Facebook is ubiquitous. Every properly executed product uses social channels for promotion and certainly every properly executed game is a social game. Zynga doesnt own the property of other developers on all ville games. This aggression will not stand
http://poisonville.com
http://www.lucasarts.com/games/thrillville/
http://www.buildabearville.com/
http://www.bigfishgames.com/download-games/7612/vampireville/index.html
http://www.vampire-ville.com/indexen.php
http://mafiaville.com
http://www.facebook.com/dumbville
http://apps.facebook.com/driverville/
bikiniville http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=102781929767751
http://www.gamersenterprise.com/play.php?act=play&id=874&name=Hunts-Ville
http://www.ezzal.com/24791/games/adventure-games/weird-ville.html
http://apps.facebook.com/bakra_ville/index.php/
careville http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=110224295684289
http://apps.facebook.com/ma_ville/dispatch_home.php?welcome=1
beachville http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=111034488929851&ref=appd
http://www.trademarkia.com/crimeville-77890086.html
LOL at Zynga filing a trademark days after Funzio
http://www.trademarkia.com/spaville-77903877.html
This aggression will not stand. Do not go down this road Zynga. You do not own the free speech, the pursuit of happiness or property of 7 billion people of humanity
On should not that even in the facebook ecosystem, just a part of the social graph, games with the ending of city and life, like Train City, Paradise Life, Sorority Life, Crime City comes from different developers and even Playdom didnt start trying to take a dump on people
LOL @ Zynga claiming to own a naming scheme centuries old. Jay Monahan you're a scumbag