zynga sued for the Oregon trail

by Rohan Thota - May 20, 2011 387 views

Some really bad news has hit Zynga and potentially us, the FrontierVille lovers: The Learning Company sued the FrontierVille developers for the use of the term The Oregon Trail in the game. If you didn’t knew, The Learning Company is responsible for creating a very successful computer game back in the days titled… The Oregon Trail.

Here is what the company said, according to Games.com: “There can be no doubt that Zynga’s adoption of an identical and confusingly similar mark is willful and intended to free-ride on the established goodwill of THE OREGON TRAIL Mark. Not only is The Learning Company’s game famous, The Learning Company approached Zynga in 2010 to inquire whether it would be interesting in assisting The Learning Company in developing a version of the game for play on Facebook. Zynga requested more information about The Learning Company’s THE OREGON TRAIL brand and The Learning Company sent Zynga detailed information on the brand, history, sales, and development plans. After preliminary discussions, the parties decided not to work together.”

This sounds pretty serious and all I can hope is that Zynga won’t be forced to quit delivering the highly anticipated update The Oregon Trail. At least do it with a different name, but do it!