Zynga Tries To Trademark 'Ville'
from the there-go-my-plans-for-faceville dept
Back in January, we wrote about Zynga — who had a reputation for copying the games of lots of other companies, including a blatant copying of the name “Mafia Wars” from another gamemaker (for which Zynga just settled a lawsuit) — and was now becoming quite the trademark bully itself, specifically going after Blingville, for daring to use the suffix “ville.” Zynga has no registered trademark on “ville” (though, in trademark law, you do not necessarily need a registered mark, and can quite frequently get by with a common law mark), but the folks over at Fusible have noticed that Zynga has recently filed for the trademark on “ville” in Europe. The application is to cover three different classifications, including for online computer and electronic games (of course). Once again, this seems pretty extreme. The suffix “ville” is hardly unique to Zynga, and it shouldn’t be allowed to monopolize it like this. Hopefully the application is rejected.
Comments on “Zynga Tries To Trademark 'Ville'”
from the there-go-my-plans-for-faceville dept
You should have gone whole hog on that ‘dept’ Mike: Let’s do MonsterNorthFaceVille!
Re: from the there-go-my-plans-for-faceville dept
You forgot the -book suffix and the i- prefix and the my- prefix.
Re: Re: from the there-go-my-plans-for-faceville dept
myiMonsterNorthFaceVillebook?
Re: Re: Re: from the there-go-my-plans-for-faceville dept
I’ve already trademarked that term. You owe me millions of dollars!
Oh, and Mike is liable as a third party for not preventing you from posting it also.
Does this mean they’ll finally get Smallville off the air? Because if it does, it’s probably a good thing.
Prior art – Commander Keen had a level in it called Hillville.
so many villes
So, I suppose if Nashville had a Facebook game Zynga would try to sue them for daring to use their own name. Never mind that I’m pretty sure the city has about 200 years of prior claim on the name. Or even the TV show “Nashville Star” for that matter. Wonder if they will start trying to extort real life cities and events for using a city name ending in ville in the title. I’d sort of like to see that argument in court.
“Your honor, this municipality is unfairly using our client’s trademarked ‘ville’ in their name, causing them irreparable harm.”
“The city has been there for 200 years, your client has only had the trademark for 2 years.”
“But..but trademark.”
Quick, someone register ZyngaVille.com !
Re: Re:
Hey, if it’s a game that viciously and mean-spiritedly makes fun of Zynga, it’ll count as parody and they wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it! >:D
I could maybe see this if they had a game called “Ville”, but ville as a suffix has been done.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ville
Ville
The french have been using that suffix for years as it mean town.
Ville du Quebec is about 400 years old
Ville du Montreal is about 375 y/o
Boucherville the town is about 300 y/o
The street Boucherville is the kid on the block at 225 y/o
Re: Ville
… heck, we’ve got townships (think villages that don’t necessarily actually contain anything but a hub intersection for the local farming area and maybe a church, school, shop, and/or petrol station, which except for the last, may all be on different side roads out of sight of the main one. in some cases the only noticeable indication the place exists is the sign) here in NZ… some of their names end in ‘ville’ as in ‘village’. (a township is basically anything too small to be labeled a town that none the less does function as if it were one. villages are included.)
Zynga is eville. That’s not news.
If Apple can do with with ‘iWhatever’, why can’t Zynga?
As I Understand It ...
… a trademark has to be kept distinct, it can?t be run into other words. Thus, ?Farm Ville??probably OK, ?Farmville??not.
I remember this came up a few decades ago, when (later-absorbed-by-Compaq-which-was-in-turn-absorbed-by-HP) Digital Equipment Corporation made various models of computer terminals named the VT52, VT100, VT220 and so on, and tried to trademark that ?VT? prefix. They couldn?t.
Attention please
Cruella to the white courtesy phone. Cruella, white courtesy phone. Thank you.
These Zynga Ville- ains...
I registered Glitzville.com 10 years ago and got a bit sidetracked but it’s now in development…
So Zynga are trying to trademark a French word for town. Seems like prior art to me.
If only my parents understood trademark...
Oh crap. I don’t have enough money to defend the pending suit on my name, Neville. Hopefully, Zynga will go after my rich musician cousin Aaron Neville first.
I think Elmer FUD missed a thread.
Certainly he could’ve made some snide remark about FUDville, talk about a slacker.
Good luck with that
In addition to french and italian words for houses and cities. There are over 36000 people in state records such as myself with the first name “Ville” in Finland alone.
Bah.
Bah… some people even trademarked apple, orange and windows.
Townsville
Have you ever heard about Townsville? No, not the city that the Powerpuff Girls live in. This is a city where people can live, go to work, socialize, make friends, etc, etc. Sound like a Zynga game yet?
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Townsville,+Queensland,+Australia&aq=0&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=29.716225,86.572266&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Townsville+Queensland,+Australia&ll=-19.257998,146.818542&spn=0.138071,0.338173&z=12
Margaritaville
Jimmy Buffet should sue, then retire in Margaritaville.