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Mafia Wars Mumbai Chapter 3 has officially opened, and as of this post, you only have five days left to become king of Bollywood.
Like the other chapters, there are four jobs and each requires a bunch of Bollywood film reels to get them done. Once you complete all of the jobs, you will get the Slumdog Billionaire, 86 A, 115 D.
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Zynga seems to think that the Double Rainbow meme still has some life in it. To recap, the Double Rainbow Guy became an instant hit on YouTube after he uploaded a video of himself going gaga over rainbows while hiking in Yosemite National Park. In tribute, FrontierVille released their own Double Rainbow (25 Horseshoes) early this August. And now, PetVille is featuring one as part of their currently running, Enchanted Kingdom outdoors decor set. (NOTE: As I've mentioned before, you must be Level 10 or above to be able to access the Outdoors Store. Moreover, you'll need to collect a dozen keys from friends to be able to unlock the door to any outdoors decor set, in order to buy from it.) But PetVille's Double Rainbow (40 Pet Cash) is only available for the next 2 days. It's also currently being promoted with Maureen The Unicorn, one of the four PetVille prizes offered by zLotto, which is Zynga's official -- and FREE! -- games lottery. So grab a unicorn or four, while the promotion lasts! I personally won a Turquoise Unicorn. If I don't like it, this unicorn also sells for 2,000 Coins. Read this post by an official rep of Zynga's YoVille to learn how to get more tickets.
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Games.com -- The Blog has obtained a complete copy of the lawsuit that Trip Hawkins' Digital Chocolate served against Zynga earlier this week over the company's use of the Mafia Wars trademark. In it, Digital Chocolate methodically lays out its argument that, "through duplicity and bad faith, [Zynga] effectively hijacked the MAFIA WARS mark" that Digital Chocolate had a prior right to.
Digital Chocolate's use of the name Mafia Wars began in June of 2004, when the company got the game in its acquisition of Finnish company Sumea Interactive. Sumea's Mafia Wars eventually spawned sequels under Digital Chocolate, including Scarlotti's Mafia Wars 2 in 2005 (here's
an IGN preview from that game's release), Mafia Wars Yakuza Wars in 2005 and Mafia Wars New York in 2009 (astute observers may see similarities to Zynga's later Mafia Wars Bangkok and Mafia Wars New York in those titles). Though Digital Chocolate's Mafia Wars was never as big as Zynga's, the company claims that two million people worldwide downloaded games in the series (including "hundreds of thousands" in the U.S.)
While Zynga may have been unaware of Digital Chocolate's game when it launched its version of Mafia Wars in 2008, Digital Chocolate made sure to let them know about the conflict in a January 2009 letter, court documents state. In May of 2009, Digital Chocolate says they received a response to their letter in which Zynga, while claiming that their game didn't infringe on Digital Chocolate's, nonetheless "disclaims any trademark rights in the term 'Mafia Wars' in connection to the game."
But that state of affairs didn't last long, according to the court documents, as Zynga filed for a Mafia Wars trademark in the U.S. in July of 2009. The company later extended the trademark application to other countries and to use in a variety of branded products from memo pads to tank tops. These filings became especially ironic when Zynga filed a suit againt rival Playdom over the Mafia Wars name. At that time, Zynga stated their "belief no other person, firm, corporation or association has the right to use the mark in commerce, either in the identical form thereof or in such near resemblance thereto as to be likely..."
In the lawsuit, Digital Chocolate is seeking that Zynga "disgorge any and all revenues and profits that Defendant has derived from its wrongful actions;" as well as "treble damages, resonable attorney's fees and expenses; and costs," rights to the Mafiwawars.com domain name and "corrective advertising for double the amount spent" by Zynga.
While Digital Chocolate's case seems strong (assuming the facts are as they've been laid out here -- Zynga has offered only a prepared statement in response to the allegations), there are a few potential legal sticking points that might prevent them from winning untold millions from Zynga. For one, Digital Chocolate seems to have never formally registered a trademark for Mafia Wars in the United States, weakening their prior claim on the name. For another, Digital Chocolate would have to prove that Zynga's use of the Mafia Wars name produced "market confusion" over which game was which. This means they have to show that some consumers assumed Zynga's mega-hit Facebook game has some relationship with Digital Chocolate's largely unheard-of downloadable title.
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If you stumbled upon a pile of $25,000 bills sitting on the street, you'd be overjoyed, wouldn't you? Well, apparently you are not the city of San Francisco, which recently called such bills "sidewalk vandalism" in a recent letter from City Attorney Alex Tse.
OK, to be fair the bills weren't real, but were fakes used as part of a marketing campaign for Zynga's Mafia Wars: Las Vegas expansion. And apparently the bills were actually glued to the sidewalk, which made them a bit difficult (and expensive) for the city to clean up. So maybe you wouldn't have been that overjoyed after all, would you?
Tse initially said he would pursue "pursue every available cause of action aggressively against Zynga for these illegal marketing tactics," but now seems to be focusing their legal efforts on marketing firm Davis Elen Advertising rather than Zynga. The ad agency has reportedly taken full responsibility for the campaign, effectively falling on their sword to protect their client (When did this become an episode of Mad Men?)
Between this fiasco and some recent Snoop-Dogg-related promotional problems in the Nevada desert, Zynga is having a bit of a bad marketing run of late. Then again, if there's no such thing as bad press, then Zynga seems to be getting a whole lot of not-bad press out of both of these snafus.
