Category: Trademarks

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News Trademarks Video Games

Next top ranking iOS game by Zynga, Hangman with Friends? Company registers hangmanwithfriends.com

Hangman with Friends

It appears gaming giant Zynga may have plans to develop the next top game to run on products like the iPhone and iPad.  

The name of the game – Hangman with Friends, which would follow its wildly popular Words with Friends game that was voted the #1 favorite app by Wired Magazine in 2009 and played by millions. 

Hangman, would likely work along the same lines as Words with Friends, the Scrabble-like word game that you can play with friends, but instead of Scrabble, players would compete by guessing a word or phrase one letter at a time.

Hangmanwithfriends.com

The company registered the domain name this week at GoDaddy according to Whois records.   Though the registrant information is hidden behind GoDaddy’s Private Registration service (Domains by Proxy), registrant information isn’t so private after all for customers paying for the service — as tweeted by Domain Name news in a recent Twitter message.  The same issue plagues many companies, not just GoDaddy.

GoDaddy’s account retrieval system currently displays a Zynga e-mail address (Email Address:****@zynga.com). 

Games with Friends

Newtoy, which was one of many companies acquired by Zynga, originally developed Words with Friends and Chess with Friends.  In October 2010, Words with Friends reached 10 million downloads on the App store.

Zynga looks to be expanding its Games with Friends brands.  In April, the company filed for a trademark on “With Friends” according to Trademarkia.

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Disputes News Trademarks Video Games

Zynga trademark application for the term ‘patentville’ prompts owner of domain name to launch website

Patentville

Zynga’s recent European trademark application for the term ‘patentville’ appears to have prompted the owner of the domain patentville.com to take notice.  On April 14, a day after my story ran on Domaining.com, the popular domain news aggregator, patentville.com went from a parked page at Sedo to an active website that is still in the very early stages of development.

According to the About Us page on its website, “We are working on bringing an idea information resource for you at PatentVille.com in the coming months.  Please email us at information at patentville.com and let us know if you would like to see us include a specific area related to inventions, patents and ideas.”

If for any reason Zynga thinks it’s going to have an easy time getting the domain name without plunking down some serious cash, there’s not much doubt the owner of patentville.com will stay on the offense.

As I pointed out in my previous story, the owner of patentville.com is Michael P. Eddy, a registered Patent attorney who knows a thing or two about trademarks, copyrights, patents and domain names.  His law office also offers services related to domain disputes. 

Plans for patentville by Zynga?

Zynga has not revealed any details or plans for patentville. 

Outside of this story and a trademark application in Europe, nothing else is known.

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News Trademarks Video Games

Zynga applies for a trademark on the word: Patentville

patentville

If you thought Zynga’s trademark application for ville was the last of Zynga’s interesting European trademark applications, think again.

This week the gaming company filed for a trademark on the word “Patentville”, with the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM), the official trade marks and designs office of the European Union. 

According to the application, the trademark was filed to cover the following goods and services:

Leather and imitations of leather, and goods made of these materials and not included in other classes; animal skins, hides; trunks and travelling bags; umbrellas, parasols and walking sticks; whips, harness and saddler; bags.

Clothing, footwear, headgear; clothing, namely, t-shirts, sweatshirts, socks, jackets, button down shirts, polo shirts, dresses, skirts, jeans, shorts, sweatpants, aprons and headwear.

Education; providing of training; entertainment; sporting and cultural activities; entertainment services, namely, incentive award programs designed to reward program participants who create new inventions or engage in the creation of patentable ideas; entertainment services, namely, providing online computer and electronic games, enhancements within online computer and electronic games, and game applications within online computer and electronic games; entertainment reviews of computer games and information relating to computer games; entertainment services provided via virtual environments in which users can interact through social games for recreational, leisure or entertainment purposes.

patentville trademark application

What about the domain name: Patentville.com?

What’s strange about this trademark application by Zynga, is that the gaming company doesn’t own the domain name, patentville.com. 

Does not owning the dot com web address mean Zynga has nothing planned online for patentville? 

It wouldn’t be the first time Zynga didn’t own the web address for one of its properties, as seen by its Fishville game which allows you to create your own aquarium on Facebook.  The gaming company uses fishville.net, instead of fishville.com.

So who owns the patentville.com domain name? 

The Law Office of Michael P. Eddy owns the domain, which is currently parked for sale at Sedo.  Michael P. Eddy is also the owner of  patent.org.

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News Trademarks Video Games

Zynga files for trademark on Farmville English Countryside: Guess who owns the domain? … and it’s not Zynga

Farmville English Countryside

Last month, I wrote about how Zynga filed for the European trademark on the word “ville”, which sparked a series of news stories and blog posts over the controversial nature of the application by the gaming company.  Writers from around the web ranging from CNET to Business Insider weighed in on the topic.

Well, now Zynga has filed another trademark this week over its latest launch: English Countryside, an expansion to one of its top games, Farmville.

farmville english countryside trademark application

What about the domain names?

While it looks as if someone is cybersquatting on the URL farmvilleenglishcountryside.com (registered in late February according to Whois), the generic (and non-controversial) version of the name, englishcountryside.com, also isn’t owned by Zynga.  It’s owned by none other than Mike Berkens, the Editor of the blog The Domains who happens to own some of the top generic domains in the world.

Over the last year, Zynga has acquired a number of domain names on the aftermarket prior to launching its properties publicly, like Cityville.com for $38,225 and Rewardville.com for $4,500.  But in the case of “English Countryside”, a term that refers to the hundreds of cottages and rolling hills around England, looks like Zygna opted to stick with Farmville.com — a name it acquired from another famous domain investor: Frank Schilling of domainnamesales.com.

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News Trademarks Video Games

Domain News Updates: Zynga, Frank Schilling, 2011 Top-selling domain, Worldwide Media, Internet Gaming

 postboard

Here are a few quick updates on stories posted here on Fusible in the last month. 

Gamegos, buyer of $500,000 domain Gamesforgirls.com– Gamegos, which I revealed last month as the buyer of the top selling domain name in 2011 so far to date, finally has a landing page online for its prized domain.  Well, sort of.  The one-page website says nothing more than, “Games for Girls -gamesforgirls.com”.  Garry Chernoff who sold the name, also had the top publicly reported domain sale for Feb. 28, 2011 – Sun. March 6, 2011, according to DN Journal, with the sale of doorhardware.com for $85,000.  While it may be old news to you, what you might not know is that Garry’s company NetIncome Ventures purchased doorhardware.com for a mere $15,655 back in 2008 via NameJet.

Zynga breaking stories– As a blogger, I like to look for breaking stories, and Zynga has been a source of many breaking stories here on Fusible.  My story on Zynga filing for a trademark on the word “ville” in the European Union got lots of reaction online with several major news sites and technology blogs picking  up the story – ranging from CNET to Wired and TechDirt to Games.com.  Hundreds of people have retweeted the story on Twitter and “Liked” it on Facebook.

The latest updates on New Jersey Internet Gambling Bill– Though Governor Chris Christie, vetoed what could’ve made New Jersey the first U.S. state to make online gambling legal, there’s still hope. “Sponsors of the legislation are talking about massaging the language to make it more acceptable to the governor rather than circling the wagons for an override vote, and everyone seems to think the issue is headed to New Jersey voters in the fall,” writes Larry Josephson for Covers.com.

Frank Schilling’s NAMedia updates its social networking experiment, again– I’ve been reporting on Frank Schilling’s social media experiment for months now.  The web app has changed names one time already from note.com to chatr.com.  Now this week, the website has changed names again – this time from chatr.com to postboard.com.

Mike Berkens’ Worldwide Media sells VisitBerlin.com for $230,000, sitting on a gold mine– As reported in February, domain investor and blogger Mike Berkens has sold $725,300 worth of domain names recently.  And those are just the sales that don’t fall under an NDA (non-disclosure agreement).  But his portfolio could be worth a whole lot more.  Earlier this month Mike wrote a story about Sony’s announcement of Move.me, it’s Move development platform.  But as he noted, Sony doesn’t own the domain, he does.  Move.me was acquired for just $4,200 during Sedo’s November .ME auction which netted over $400,000 in sales.