Zynga applies for ‘Ville’ trademark in Europe


9 Mar 2011

Zynga has filed an application to trademark the word ‘Ville’ in Europe under three different classifications.

The trademark application, found by Fusible, was filed for the Office of Harmonisation in the Internal Market, the EU’s trademark and designs registration office.

The filing is related to the word ‘Ville’, which Zynga uses for its social games, such as ‘FarmVille’ and ‘CityVille’.

The social gaming company wishes to trademark the name under three classifications, which includes categories such as clothing, computer game software, computers and wireless devices and automatic vending machines. The application is under examination.

Zynga recently sent a “cease and desist” letter to the company behind the game ‘Blingville’. As a result, it filed a lawsuit against Zynga.

This trademark could allow Zynga to stop other companies using the word ‘Ville’ in the title their own gaming products.

Zynga isn’t the only company that has tried to trademark a part of the name of their key product. In the US, Facebook was granted the copyright of the word ‘Face’, which stops other social communication services online from using it in their titles.