Category: Trademarks

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News Trademarks Video Games

Zynga files trademark in the U.S. for Empires & Allies, launches Hanging with Friends for iOS devices

Empires & Allies

Zynga has filed a trademark application for its newest Facebook game “Empires & Allies” with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

It came as no big surprise. 

Zynga filed for the European trademark earlier this month following the announcement of the launch of Empires & Allies.

Word Mark EMPIRES & ALLIES
Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: Class 9: Computer game software; video game programs; and computer software platforms for social networking; interactive video game programs; downloadable electronic game programs and computer software platforms for social networking that may be accessed via the Internet, computers and wireless devices; computer software to enable uploading, posting, showing, displaying, tagging, blogging, sharing or otherwise providing electronic media or information in the fields of virtual communities, electronic gaming, entertainment, and general interest via the Internet or other communications networks with third parties; Magnetic encoded gift cardsIC 041. US 100 101 107. G & S: Computer and electronic games provided online, enhancements within online computer and electronic games, and game applications within online computer and electronic games; entertainment reviews of computer games provided online; information relating to computer games provided online; virtual environments in which users can interact through social games for recreational, leisure or entertainment purposes
Standard Characters Claimed  
Mark Drawing Code (4) STANDARD CHARACTER MARK
Serial Number 85335790
Filing Date June 1, 2011
Current Filing Basis 1B;44D
Original Filing Basis 1B;44D
Owner (APPLICANT) Zynga Inc. CORPORATION DELAWARE 365 Vermont Street San Francisco CALIFORNIA 94103
Attorney of Record John M. Kim
Priority Date March 4, 2011
Type of Mark TRADEMARK. SERVICE MARK
Register PRINCIPAL
Live/Dead Indicator LIVE

Other recent filings by Zynga in the U.S. and Europe include  Mojitomo (details not disclosed), Patentville (details not disclosed), Farmville English Countryside, and of course the controversial word mark “ville”.

In other Zynga news, as I predicted in early May the company launched a hangman game for iOS devices, however, instead of using the domain hangmanwithfriends.com, the company is using hangingwithfriends.com.

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Disputes Movies News Trademarks

Updates on Top 5 Fusible stories, May

US Navy SEALs coming out of the water

In May 2011, the United States Navy SEALs drew a lot of news coverage on the web following the killing of Osama bin Laden.  But the SEALs weren’t the only story on Fusible that attracted readers.  

Zynga hinted at plans of developing the next top iPhone game with the registration of hangmanwithfriends.com, the Navy won the battle over the SEAL Team 6 trademark and filed its own marks, Sony Pictures got rights to Kathryn Bigelow’s film about killing Osama bin Laden, former TechCrunch writer Duncan Riley sold The Inquisitr on Flippa for $330,000, and UberMedia gave up its domain claim on Twitteripad.com.

Hangman with Friends– There hasn’t been any news regarding Zynga’s plans for “Hangman with Friends”, other than the company registering the domain name hangmanwithfriends.com.  Considering one of the first word games kids learn to play is hangman, you can bet if Zynga does launch a hangman game on the iPad or iPhone, it could very well be the next top ranking iOS game.   

UberMedia and Twitter– After my story about UberMedia purchasing the domain name twitteripad.com was posted, the company deleted the domain from its portfolio.  The good news: the company avoided another possible trademark dispute with Twitter like the one it encountered over UberTwitter.  The bad news: someone in China registered the domain and is now redirecting users to a fake Apple survey page.  These types of websites often lead to scams or other problems for people, like computer viruses.  Either way, it looks like UberMedia made a smart play by dropping the name.  The company just raised another $5.6 million and its entire business revolves around Twitter.

The Inquistr — The Inquisitr (inquisitr.com) founded by former TechCrunch writer and b5media co-founder Duncan Riley in May 2008, sold for $330,000 USD on Flippa.   Two days after my story was published, The Inquisitr ran its own story “Duncan dishes on Inquisitr sale, future plans” that said the sale was complete and the site had changed hands.  “With everything said and done, Duncan has disclosed some facts and figures about the sale of the site. Final sale price was 10% over the reserve of $300,000, at $330,000. Keeping in with the threes trend, it went for 30x the monthly net after writers’ expenses” wrote Kim LaCapria. 

Navy’s SEAL Team trademark battle — I was the first to report (before any other news site or blog) that the Department of Navy filed a trademark for “SEAL Team” following Disney’s trademark filings on SEAL Team 6.  The story got immediately picked up by MediaPost who attributed their story here, but other major media outlets that reported on the news shortly thereafter, failed to give credit.  It can be frustrating as a blogger to see so many news sites and blogs not attribute the sources of their articles.  Ultimately, Disney abandoned their trademark filings.

Sony Pictures — Deadline.com reported that Sony Pictures Entertainment acquired the rights to Kathryn Bigelow’s film about killing Osama bin Laden.  Originally called “killing bin laden”, Kathryn Bigelow had apparently decided to change the film’s title.  Regardless, Sony Pictures registered nearly a dozen domain names including thekillingofbinladenmovie.com.  As of today, the film remains untitled, but the domain names have started forwarding to sonypictures.com.

Categories
News Trademarks Video Games WIPO

Empires and Allies: Another missed domain name opportunity for Zynga?

Empires and Allies by Zynga

Zynga announced the launch of another game this week called Empires and Allies, its first combat strategy game which has more features than any other Zynga game to date. 

The company which is known for acquiring domain names on the aftermarket like Cityville.com and for buying never-before-registered domain names like HangmanwithFriends.com and FarmvilleExpress.com, may have another missed opportunity on its hands by failing to get the domain name EmpiresandAllies.com, a domain that was first registered in September 2010, along with the dotnet and dotorg versions of the name.

The company put out news on its blog about the launch of Empires and Allies, which included different links as to how to connect.  Play Empires & Allies at: http://www.zynga.com/empires, follow Empires & Allies on Twitter at @EmpiresAllies, or “Like” Empires & Allies on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/EmpiresAndAllies.

The missed opportunity

You’ll notice in the company’s announcement there’s no mention of a separate website address for the game. 

That’s because Zynga doesn’t appear to own the .com, .net, or .org domain names, which are currently sitting behind WHOIS privacy at GoDaddy. 

The .com doesn’t resolve at the time of this story, while the .net and .org are both parked at GoDaddy.  While it’s entirely possible Zynga may own the domains but hasn’t developed a website, all three names are registered to a yahoo address according to GoDaddy, not a Zynga address which is typically the case seen with Zynga’s domain names.

Could it be that an insider registered the domain names in the midst of development?

Zynga domains

Whether an insider registered the domains or not, Zynga is facing another problem on the web — most domain names are already taken.

A NamePros member yesterday posted a questionable message on the forum asking other members to appraise the .us version of the domain that they had purchased, noting in the post that the following domains were already registered:

empiresandallies.com
empiresandallies.info
empiresandallies.net
empiresandallies.org
empiresandallies.mobi
empiresandallies.us
empiresandallies.biz
empiresandallies.ca
empiresandallies.mx
empiresandallies.eu
empiresandallies.in
empiresanda…com.mx
empiresandallies.nl
empiresandallies.se

The member ends the post by saying, “By the way, Zynga doesn’t have the trademark yet, so Zynga can’t WIPO it due to Reverse Domain Hijacking laws.”

I wouldn’t be so sure about that. 

If you track the cases at WIPO, you’d know that Zynga has been successful.

Zynga files trademark

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Zynga filed a trademark for “Empires and Allies”. 

Not with the United States Patent and Trademark Office yet, but with the Trademark Office of the European Union.

Trade mark name : EMPIRES & ALLIES
Trade mark No : 010017028
Trade mark basis: CTM
Date of receipt : 02/06/2011
Number of results: 1 of 9

Name:  Zynga Inc.
ID No: 437897
Natural or legal person:  Legal entity
Address:  365 Vermont Street
Post code:  94103
Town:  San Francisco,
State: California
Country: UNITED STATES
Correspondence address:  Zynga Inc.  365 Vermont Street San Francisco, California 94103 ESTADOS UNIDOS (DE AMÉRICA)

Categories
Disputes News Trademarks WIPO

WIPO Roundup: Google, Autotrader, Wikimedia, and other interesting disputes

Got Milk Funny Tshirt

Nearly 1,000 domain disputes have been filed with WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization, since the beginning of 2011, with many cases getting attention across the web like the case of Facebook which filed a complaint over 21 separate domains and won.   

Here’s a look at some of the more recent disputes filed that include companies ranging from Google to The California Milk Processor Board which filed a complaint over the domain name momgotmilk.com.

GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft – gea.com
GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft, one of the largest system providers for food and energy processes with about EUR 4.4 billion revenue in 2010 according to its website has filed a domain dispute over the three-letter domain name gea.com.  Gea.com was first registered back in 1995 and is currently owned by G.E.A Design.  The complainant uses geagroup.com for its company website.  Although it may seem impossible that the company could win gea.com, you will be surprised.  In 2003, GEA Group won the three-letter domain gea.biz. 

TPI Holdings, Inc. – autotrade.com
Autotrader.com and Auto Trader are trademarks of TPI Holdings, Inc.  TPI Holdings is no stranger to WIPO having filed nearly two dozen cases since 2000 with most involving the keyword “trader”, not “trade”.  Its most recent cases came in 2010 when it won the transfer of autotraderleaseguide.com, cycletradermagazine.com, and cycletradermagazines.com.  Well known domain investor Garry Chernoff is the current owner of autotrade.com.  Garry Chernoff made headlines in 2011 with top dollar sales including gamesforgirls.com at $500,000 and bluejeans.com for $150,000.

The California Milk Processor Board – momgotmilk.com
The California Milk Processor Board is the owner of the Got Milk? trademark.   The CA Milk Processor Board currently owns about 40 domain names according to DomainTools, which include gotmilkchocolate.com and cowabduction.com.  It also owns and operates gotmilk.com, a website that receives thousands of visitors a month according to Compete.  In 2010 the CA Milk Processor Board won a number of domain names after the respondent failed to reply.  Among the names handed over were gotalmondmilk.com and gotnutmilk.com.

Wikimedia Foundation Inc. and Google Inc.
Unlike the cases of autotrade.com and gea.com, Wikimedia and Google seem to  have more legitimate claims.  Wikimedia is going after the domains wikiipedia.org, wikipediia.org, and wikippedia.org.  Google is going after ad-words.mobi.  Wikimedia won cases earlier this year over additional typo domains wekipedia.com and wikkipedia.org.  A rough estimate by Compete, shows that 2 of the 3 typos actually get traffic in the hundreds each month.

To see some of the latest WIPO UDRP cases, visit the WIPO website.

Categories
News Trademarks Video Games

Game Rumors: Zynga registers Mojitomo domain names, files for trademark

mojitomo

While rumors of Zynga’s imminent IPO continue to spread across news sites and blogs, the company appears to be busy behind the scenes working on a project called Mojitomo. 

The company filed a trademark application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on May 24, 2011. 

Here’s a look at the application from the USPTO website.

Word Mark MOJITOMO
Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: Computer game software; video game programs; and computer software platforms for social networking; interactive video game programs; downloadable electronic game programs and computer software platforms for social networking that may be accessed via the Internet, computers and wireless devices; computer software to enable uploading, posting, showing, displaying, tagging, blogging, sharing or otherwise providing electronic media or information in the fields of virtual communities, electronic gaming, entertainment, and general interest via the Internet or other communications networks with third partiesIC 041. US 100 101 107. G & S: Computer and electronic games provided online, enhancements within online computer and electronic games, and game applications within online computer and electronic games; entertainment reviews of computer games provided online; information relating to computer games provided online; virtual environments in which users can interact through social games for recreational, leisure or entertainment purposes
Standard Characters Claimed  
Mark Drawing Code (4) STANDARD CHARACTER MARK
Serial Number 85328208
Filing Date May 24, 2011
Current Filing Basis 1B
Original Filing Basis 1B
Owner (APPLICANT) Zynga Inc. CORPORATION DELAWARE 365 Vermont Steret San Francisco CALIFORNIA 94103
Attorney of Record John M. Kim
Type of Mark TRADEMARK. SERVICE MARK
Register PRINCIPAL
Live/Dead Indicator LIVE

‘Mojitomo’ domain names

Days before on May 21, it looks like the company registered several domain names using MarkMonitor, a brand protection company used by many of the world’s biggest companies.   Zynga’s own moniker, zynga.com, uses the same privacy and brand protection services provided by MarkMonitor and DNStination.

The domains included  mojitomo.com, mojitomo.net, and mojitomo.org, none of which had ever been registered before. 

While I have no proof that Zynga is the registrant of the domain names, there’s a very strong chance considering the names were registered only days before the trademark was filed.

I’ve searched the internet using the keyword “mojitomo”, but I couldn’t find any hints as to what the name could be used for.  Except for the Cuban drink Mojito, not much esle shows up.  There doesn’t appear to be any stories about Zynga and the word mojitomo, aside from this article. 

Could Zynga’s  Japan studio Unoh Games have a game in development?