Similar enough to be sued? Apparently.

It looks like someone tickled a lion.

A few days ago, Blistered Thumbs reported on some recent lawsuits involving insider trading with Zynga. As of now, things are definitely not getting much better for the social giant. EA just filed a lawsuit against Zynga claiming that the June-released The Ville clearly violates copyright law on one of their games. Specifically, as written by the general manager of Maxis, Lucy Bradshaw, “the infringement of The Sims Social was unmistakable to those of us at Maxis as well as to players and the industry at large.”

Bradshaw goes on to say that although other companies have made similar infringement claims before, they have the resources, i.e. money, necessary to actually take on Zynga in the courts. She also states that Maxis hopes to use this instance to protect other companies who can’t defend themselves in a similar way.

Zynga has since responded to the lawsuit and the statement can be seen below.

Needless to say, I find this to be an … interesting response in more than one way. Chiefly among those aspects is the fact that Zynga is heavily implying, or, considering the subtlety at work here, outright stating that SimCity Social is more or less infringing on CityVille. I have to wonder if Zynga will try to sue EA back over this, as unlikely as that would probably be.

Regardless, this is yet another issue in the ever-increasing string of Zynga problems as of late. I can’t say I’m sure how all this will play out, but stay tuned to Blistered Thumbs for more information involving this story.

(Click here to see the entirety of the EA complaint.)

Source: Joystiq

Robert H.

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