![]() The question at hand is an interesting one- does the success of Zynga’s two Facebook games give rise to its exclusive rights in the “-ville” suffix for social media applications? One could argue that a combined 156 million active monthly users over less than 2 years is certainly enough for strong trademark rights in the marks, but the debate hinges on an arguably weak suffix. In its letters, Zynga asserted that the BLINGVILLE mark for a social networking game violates the Lanham Act, as there is a likelihood of confusion with Zynga’s similar games “containing the letter combination of ‘ville.’” In response, Blingville filed the instant action seeking the court’s judgment that BLINGVILLE does not interfere with Zynga’s trademark rights. Zynga became aware of Blingville’s intentions to produce a Facebook game application under the mark in November, and sent three cease-and-desist letters in an attempt to block Blingville’s use of the name. Patent and Trademark Office last November. In its motion, Blingville asserts that its predecessor company registered the domain name in 2004 and filed an application to register BLINGVILLE as a trademark with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia for a declaratory judgment that its BLINGVILLE mark for a planned Facebook game does not infringe Zynga’s marks in FARMVILLE or CITYVILLE. However, this first one is a preemptive lawsuit- a company named Blingville LLC asked the U.S. With such immense user activity, the inevitable trademark infringement suits have begun. Cityville is now even more popular than its predecessor, with over 15 million active daily users and 100 million active monthly users. The game’s developer, Zynga Inc., followed Farmville’s viral success with a similar virtual world game called “Cityville” in December 2010. Maybe I missed out on the thrills of the virtual acquisition of livestock, though, because Farmville now has over 14 million active daily users and 56 million active monthly users. ![]() After a few weeks of constant “Jane has earned 5 chickens!” updates, I blocked the application and promptly forgot about it. Pigs? Cows? Bales of hay? What are those doing on Facebook? Those were my thoughts in late 2009, when notifications from a new application called “Farmville” started invading my news feed. ![]()
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