Zynga files complaint against French developer
Social giant seeking to have Kobojo blocked from developing games with '-Ville' suffix in title.
Social gaming giant Zynga has filed a complaint in a San Francisco court against French games developer Kobojo, citing trademark infringement on the company’s ‘Ville’ series of games, and accusing the company of “hitching on the fame” of Zynga’s products.
The dispute stems from the launch of Kobojo’s PyramidVille game, which was launched in beta in January 2011, originally called PyramidZ, and currently has 810,000 monthly active users.
In the complaint Zynga claims that the game is similar to its trademarked series of ‘Ville’ games, including CityVille, FarmVille, FrontierVille and FishVille, and as it is marketed through the same channels will “deceive” the user into believing they are playing a Zynga product. Zynga then went on to reference an unnamed social games news portal’s headline, which described PyramidVille as “FrontierVille in Egypt,” to highlight the similarities between the two games.
The decision to take the dispute to court was taken after Kobojo refused to change the name of PyramidVille, even hinting at plans to create more games featuring a ‘Ville’ suffix. Zynga is looking to have Kobojo blocked from developing any further products with the suffix, and is seeking damages of three times PyramidVille’s total profits.
The case comes weeks after it was revealed that social casino games have a sharp increase in player numbers, while ‘farming games’ such as CityVille and PyramidVille are in decline. Social analytics company Kontagent reports that in 2012 13% of all games players on Facebook play casino games, compared to 8% in 2011.