Deja-Ville? Zynga once again tries to click-block use of ‘Ville and fails
Zynga Suing To Keep “Ville” Exclusive, really?
I have heard some silly things before, but come on, seriously? How can you sue to make something exclusive, that you didn’t even think of in the first place? I would have to kill every tree in my state to make enough paper to list all of the places that had the suffix “ville” in their- name way before anyone ever even thought of electricity.
So, the word is that Zynga is trying to sue Pyramidville for their use of the suffix “Ville.” The irony here is that Zynga doesn’t exactly have the best reputation for, well, originality, when it comes to titles. Their claim to suit is that since they use “ville” in all of their game names(think CityVille, FarmVille, FishVille, FrontierVille, PetVille, and YoVille) that users will think Pyramidville is one of their games and so will drain their coffers.
It is common knowledge, well, it should be, that you cannot copyright or trademark common use words or phrases such as “ville,” or “you’re fired” (wait, didn’t some guy with a motheaten toupee copyright that one?). Besides, wasn’t the French there first with the whole “ville” thing? “Ville” is a French word meaning a small town, shire, or city….and a French company is using it in context – Kojobo. And wasn’t there too many video games to count before Zynga ever existed? Well then, on the pretense that Zynga is trying to sue, couldn’t any other game company sue them for making a Clicky game in the first place?
Moral of the story is, get over it Zynga, it doesn’t really matter to any of us who have seen the game, it just matters if it is interesting enough to waste 5minutes of our life on while we wait for something to else to download.
Besides, Zygna isn’t even original in being a gaming company TRYING to cash in over copyrighting common terms in a title- ask Bethsheda in regards to the word Scrolls.
Or… Oh Yeah- when Zynga FAILED when trying this once before this at the beginning of 2011 with the Facebook game Blingville:
“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’.”
Gamasutra 1/24/2011
A gallery of cool Farmville images on the net (Royal Tutorial,Konatu, Freak Of the Week, Cracked) from those with way to much time invested in it.
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