There is something distinctly disgusting about Zynga suing somebody for using a phrase "[someting] with friends", that they feel they own - when the whole company is basically built on stealing ideas of other companies and adding "oh-look-wow-facebook-spam" to them.
Well, given that they're basically a parasite on a host company that thinks it owns all names with the words "Face" or "Book" in them, are we surprised?
Honestly, when you first heard of "Bang With Friends," would you have been surprised if it was yet another quality Zynga production?
Even if you wouldn't have - "Bang With Friends" instantly connects with "Words With Friends" in my mind. This is a really unpopular and unexpected thing to say, but for once I don't think Zynga is in the wrong.
I didn't make the connection at all until today. I think it's because "Words" is a noun, and "Bang" is a verb. "[noun] With Friends" gets represented as a completely different thing in my mind than "[verb] With Friends" (i.e. the latter is an action, the former is language nonsense).
I didn't make the connection right away. I just think that if Zynga is in the right, then whoever owns Scrabble is too.
Coming up with products that borrow from existing IP is their thing. Naturally, they are going to try to keep other mobile developers from doing the same.
It's too awkward not to be a ripoff. I could see how "Bang Your Friends" would be coincidental, but "Bang With Friends" sounds like a turn of phrase an older person would use while awkwardly trying to appear "with it" to someone younger. That is, you don't "bang with [person]" - you just plain "bang [person]." Unless maybe you're talking about group sex - "I banged [person] with [person]." Though that's a different product entirely...
I made the connection: it's a parody, a clever(?) play on words riding off an existing franchise. I never once would have guessed it was made by the same people, because game developers tend not to make sex apps. I've never heard of it happening before.
This is much in the same way I never once thought that Pirates XXX was in any way related to the Disney series Pirates of the Caribbean, even though the guys who made Pirates XXX really want you to draw that connection. A rational person would realize that Zynga, much like Disney, is not in the business of facilitating promiscuous sex.
Exactly what I was thinking. They were in the press early on, and had a huge boost in users. Looks like things have been slowly dying since then, down more then 80% since peak. All the coverage should boost them right back, even if they are forced to change their name.
Remember when Monster Cable sued Monster Mini-golf? Personally, I think Zynga has more important things to worry about, and I get this is a big deal for the startup, but it's just a corporate lawyer doing his job.
I'm not saying it's right, but if someone made another, more accurately targeted, ____ With Friends game, they could cite Zynga's inaction with respect to Bang With Friends as not protecting their trademark.
As with all things legal, the underlying reality is less interesting than the potential interpretation. Granted, if I'm wrong and they actually wanna put Bang With Friends out of business, well that would be just plain sad.
Not that there's any coherent logic to IP law, but logically what's the difference between zero royalty paid (aka not protecting the trademark) and settling on a fixed-price perpetual royalty of negligible cost?
It's so weird to me how in some areas of the law (criminal law, for instance) the "gray area" is embraced and fully considered, where in other areas (IP/business law) decisions seem to be so black-and-white. As a total layman, I'd guess this "tone" is completely set by case law?
If so, is there any precedent that says a fixed cost perpetual royalty priced at $0.01 or similar constitutes "protecting" a trademark?
That part of IP law is actually sane. Instead of perpetual monopoly over something the "owner" doesn't even care about. Names (i.e. trademarks) will go back into the pool when they are no longer used/valued/desired by "owner". The cost and requirements of "maintenance" also stops trivial, speculative, or trollish trademarks.
Copyright use to have similar sense (must apply, must renew).
I'm not a laywer, but I think the concern with protecting trademarks is to demonstrate that you actually have an interest in said trademark, and are not simply trolling your competitor.
By having a token royalty, they demonstrate that they do care about the trademark even when it is being used by someone they would otherwise like to hurt.
> It's so weird to me how in some areas of the law (criminal law, for instance) the "gray area" is embraced and fully considered, where in other areas (IP/business law) decisions seem to be so black-and-white.
Ah, this is mostly the tension between "balancing tests" and "bright-line rules" in jurisprudence. I worked in criminal law for a while, and it's basically statutory, which means mostly bright line rules for prosecution. Sentencing involves more balancing tests, that's probably what you're thinking about. Though there are even some mandatory minimums that are bright lines.
One of the balancing tests you hear about the most is actually in IP law, the fair use standard. (People sometimes casually talk about fair use as if it's a list of four bright line criteria, but that's not really correct.)
Bright line rules are handy in that they add clarity for everyone following the law. Businesses that want to establish processes in explicit compliance tend to prefer bright lines, for example. Balancing tests are important when you're safeguarding the rights of the people against the state, or when individual cases will have unique mitigating circumstances that are too numerous to foresee or account for in a hard and fast rule. Balancing tests help add lenience, or help customize the law to particular situations. That's why you might see more balancing tests in sentencing, or in constitutional issues.
UPDATE: Statutes also tend to be more bright-line, while traditionally, judges made common law with more balancing tests. The US (thanks to the UK) is considered a common law jurisdiction, since we have some judge made law, while most European courts are said to rely on civil code. This is oversimplistic though, because these days European judges are more willing to look at precedents and adopt customs based on prior cases, and many US jurisdictions have implemented "uniform codes" which attempt to codify many areas of the law formerly left to judges. Everyone's a bit of a blend now, just with more of a common law or civil law flavor. (Pending correction from any European Advocates out there, of course.) Moreover, some judges develop bright lines, and some statutes call for fairness tests, so it's all blurred now.
The only entities benefiting from the "protect it or lose it" IP laws are news agencies. It generates all sorts of weird "official business" conflict for them to gleefully report.
Random note: My friend is married to a woman from France -- the first Christmas they were together after a few months of dating, she was like "have you seen 'Mother, I missed the Plane' it's a family tradition to watch it each Christmas," to which my friend said no. When she put the movie in, it was Home Alone
No apology necessary. We don't have as many amusing translations, but every year we do watch the Robin Sparkles Holiday Special on the CBC as a national tradition.
First they laugh at you, then they sue you, then you win.
BWF is a funny name, leverages the WWF name more than a little, and is going to get great press from the legal fight.
Congratulations to BWF for getting sued; you're getting traction. If the BWF network gets large enough, it could be renamed almost anything and it will still work.
Zynga will do better to actually make better games that someone will play than going after small app developers over flimsy reasons. Oh and they can't own the phrase "... with friends"!
It does seem stupid but they have to. It's like the Bethesda / Mojang trademark battle over "Scrolls". Trademark law, at least in this country, is strict. If you don't go after potential trademark infringements diligently and in a reasonable time period, then you will quickly lose the legal right to do so.
It doesn't really legitimize this suit to compare it with another famously absurd trademark infringement battle. "Scrolls" are a fantasy trope (meaning it's so commonly used that it's considered unimaginative)! You can't have that! I think that "Elder Scrolls" is distinctive and trademark-able. "Scrolls" is not.
Setting aside the issue of whether the phrase "With Friends" is distinctive, and therefore trademarkable, BWF and WWF do not serve remotely similar purposes, so they're not going to lose their right to defend the trademark in their own market.
Finally, their big trademark blunder was using an indefensible trademark. The damage there has already been done. It doesn't make sense to then hurt your brand's reputation by linking it in the minds of your customers with a hookup app. The fact that this story is on the front page of Hacker News means that the Streisand effect is hurting the brand already (not that Zynga has a sterling reputation here). Sometimes it's a tactical error to do what the legal department recommends, and this is one of those cases.
It was only this week that Zynga management finally decided whether to sue BWF or to greenlight Zynga's new, innovative "Bang with Friends with Friends" app. A rare paroxysm of self-respect at the company prevented them from taking both actions simultaneously.
