Zynga and Vostu settle lawsuit over social games
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Zynga Inc., which expects to begin selling its shares on the Nasdaq Stock Market next week, has settled its copyright infringement lawsuit against Vostu, a Brazilian developer of social games.
Zynga had alleged, among other things, that Vostu’s MegaCity game is identical to Zynga’s popular CityVille.
Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but Zynga said in a statement, ‘Vostu made a monetary payment to Zynga and made some changes to four of its games.’ The San Francisco social games publisher would not say how much money it received in the settlement nor which games Vostu agreed to modify.
Zynga’s lawsuit, filed in June in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, had alleged that five Vostu games -- MegaCity, Cafe Mania, Pet Mania, Vostu Poker and MiniRazenda -- were near clones of Zynga’s titles.
Vostu, founded in 2007 by three Harvard University graduates to make social games for the Latin American market, had raised $45.9 million from several prominent Silicon Valley venture firms, including Intel Capital and Accel Partners.
The company, headquartered in New York with offices in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Sao Paulo, Brazil, estimates that 25% of Internet users in Brazil have played one of its games.
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-- Alex Pham