Zynga Suing French Publisher For Using Ville Suffix

Aran Suddi 17 Comments

Zynga Inc, the company behind FarmVille, is suing the French publisher Kobojo over a Facebook game called PyramidVille, which launched early 2011.

The case has been brought to court as Zynga believes that, “Facebook users are likely to believe, erroneously, that PYRAMIDVILLE is a member of Zynga’s ‘VILLE Family of Games.”

The Ville suffix has not been trademarked by Zynga, though the company is currently in the process of trying to obtain that trademark in the US.  Zynga are involved in a similar case with the developers of Blingville, another Facebook game.

Zynga are demanding damages of up to three times the profit that Kobojo makes from PyramidVille.  We’ll keep you updated as the case progresses.

Source: Reuters

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17 Comments

  1. FFS. When will these big stupid companies understand that you can’t own words?!

    • to a certain extent, you can, otherwise trademarks wouldnt exist

      • Yeah, i realised that after i typed it, but this is just stupid due to what colmshan says.

  2. Can’t see this standing up in court.
    ‘Ville’ is a common suffix in France, according to Wikipedia 20% of settlements in the Normandy area have the suffix.

  3. Well on the way to legalville then.

    Zyng!

  4. I can understand how Apple want to protect their ‘iDevice’ brand as they’re actual products, but adding ‘ville’ onto the end of a word and making it a game isn’t the same thing!

  5. Wait, Zynga are suing someone for copying them?

    Irony detector is going absolutely nuts!

  6. In this case I can certainly see how it’d create brand confusion, but it’ll probably be tricky if they don’t have the trademarks already.

  7. They’re acting like a bunch of ville-ains. Boooooo!

  8. It’s Bethesda vs. Mojang all over again.

    • Hey. You stole my comment. In that case i’ll have to be satisfied with this witty, thought provoking, piece of verbal insightfulness : sod off zynga.

  9. Oh for peter’s sake! Ville is just a generic word. Plus, why didn’t they trademark it after they had released their first ville game?

    • yeah they can’t they’re so mean.

  10. They can micro transact my back side! No idea what that really means but it’s a concerted attempt to show well deserved contempt for the zynga lawyers and their idiotic tactics.

    • Micro-transactionville now thats a game I will erm.. play.

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