If they remade the assets and did not copy directly the files it's not copyright infringement in international law. Same thing with game mechanics. If Zynga did not copy/paste the code or texts from EA them there's no ground in international copyright law.
There is plenty of legal precedence in US law, which pertains as the case is being argued in US, that contradicts some of your statements:
Midway Mfg. Co., v. Dirkschneider et al. 543 F. Supp 466 (D. Neb. 1981)
Nintendo of America, Inc. v. Elcon Industries, 564 F.Supp. 937 (E.D. Mich. 1982)
Atari, Inc. v. North American Philips Consumer Electronics Corp., 672 F.2d 607 (7th Cir. 1982)
Midway Manufacturing Co. v. Artic International, Inc., 547 F. Supp. 999 (N.D. Ill. 1982)
Midway Manufacturing Co. v. Artic International, Inc., 704 F.2d 1009 (7th Cir. 1983)
Team Play, Inc. v. Boyer, 391 F.Supp.2d 695 (N.D. Ill. 2005)
William L Crawford II et al. v. Midway Games, Inc. et al. (W.D. Cal. 2007)
Capcom Co., Ltd. et. al. v. The MKR Group (N.D. Cal. 2008)
To elaborate a bit from those above cases, let alone others, to establish infringement a plaintiff must prove ownership of a valid copyright and "copying" by the defendant. Because direct evidence of copying often is unavailable, copying may be inferred where the defendant had access to the copyrighted work and the accused work is substantially similar to the copyrighted work (Warner Brothers, Inc. v. American Broadcasting Cos., Inc., 654 F.2d 204, 207 (2d Cir. 1981)).
Some courts have expressed the test of substantial similarity in two parts: (1) whether the defendant copied from the plaintiff's work and (2) whether the copying, if proven, went so far as to constitute an improper appropriation (Scott v. WKJG, Inc., 376 F.2d 467, 469 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 389 U.S. 832, 88 S.Ct. 101, 19 L.Ed.2d 91 (1967)); Arnstein v. Porter, 154 F.2d 464, 468 (2d Cir. 1946); cf. Sid & Marty Krofft Television Productions, Inc. v. McDonald's Corp., 562 F.2d 1157, 1164 (9th Cir. 1977) (extrinsic-intrinsic test)). In many cases, the courts focus on the second part of that test and the response of the "ordinary observer" (Ideal Toy Corp. v. Fab-Lu Ltd. (Inc.), 360 F.2d 1021, 1023 n.2 (2d Cir. 1966)). Specifically, the test is whether the accused work is so similar to the plaintiff's work that an ordinary reasonable person would conclude that the defendant unlawfully appropriated the plaintiff's protectible expression by taking material of substance and value (Krofft, 562 F.2d at 1164). Judge Learned Hand, in finding infringement, once stated that "the ordinary observer, unless he set out to detect the disparities, would be disposed to overlook them, and regard their aesthetic appeal as the same" (Peter Pan Fabrics, Inc. v. Martin Weiner Corp., 274 F.2d 487, 489 (2d Cir. 1960)). It has been said that this test does not involve "analytic dissection and expert testimony," Arnstein, 154 F.2d at 468, but depends on whether the accused work has captured the "total concept and feel" of the copyrighted work (Roth Greeting Cards v. United Card Co., 429 F.2d 1106, 1110 (9th Cir. 1970)).
While dissection is generally disfavored, the ordinary observer test, in application, must take into account that the copyright laws preclude appropriation of only those elements of the work that are protected by the copyright (Durham Industries, Inc. v. Tomy Corp., 630 F.2d 905, 913 (2d Cir. 1980); Clarke v. G. A. Kayser & Sons, Inc., 472 F.Supp. 481, 482 (W.D.Pa.1979), aff'd without op., 631 F.2d 725 (3d Cir. 1980)). "It is an axiom of copyright law that the protection granted to a copyrightable work extends only to the particular expression of an idea and never to the idea itself" (Reyher v. Children's Television Workshop, 533 F.2d 87, 90 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 980, 97 S.Ct. 492, 50 L.Ed.2d 588 (1976)). "Unlike a patent, a copyright gives no exclusive right to the art disclosed; protection is given only to the expression of the idea-not the idea itself" (Mazer v. Stein, 347 U.S. 201, 217, 74 S.Ct. 460, 470, 98 L.Ed. 630 (1954); see Baker v. Selden, 101 U.S. 99, 102-03, 25 L.Ed. 841 (1879)). The Copyright Act of 1976 codifies this idea-expression dichotomy (17 U.S.C. 102(b); see H.Rep.No. 94-1476, 94th Cong., 2d Sess. 57, reprinted in (1976) U.S. Code Cong. and Ad.News 5659, 5670). Thus, "if the only similarity between plaintiff's and defendant's works is that of the abstract idea, there is an absence of substantial similarity and hence no infringement results" (Nimmer 13.03(A)(1), at 13-19 (original emphasis); see Warner Brothers, 654 F.2d at 204, 208; Durham, 630 F.2d at 913).
It follows that copyright protection does not extend to games as such (Chamberlin v. Uris Sales Corp., 150 F.2d 512 (2d Cir. 1945); see also Anti-Monopoly, Inc. v. General Mills Fun Group, 611 F.2d 296, 300 n.1 (9th Cir. 1979)). As Professor Nimmer notes, however, "some limited copyright protection is nevertheless available in connection with games. [...] (a) relatively minimal artistic expression, if original, would render copyrightable [...] the pattern or design of game boards and playing cards as pictorial or graphic works" (1 Nimmer 2.18(H)(3), at 2-212). Recognizing this principle, the Second Circuit has held copyrightable as an audiovisual work, see 17 U.S.C. 102(a)(6), the "repetitive sequence of a substantial portion of the sights and sounds" of a video game called "SCRAMBLE" (Stern Electronics, Inc. v. Kaufman, 669 F.2d 852, 856 (2d Cir. 1982); see also Atari, Inc. v. Amusement World, Inc., Civ. No. Y-81-803, slip op. at 9 (D. Md. 1981); Midway Mfg. Co. v. Dirkschneider, Civ. No. 81-0-243, slip op. at 13-14 (D. Neb. 1981)).
Now, there is no litmus paper test by which to apply the idea-expression distinction; the determination is necessarily subjective. As Judge Learned Hand said, "Obviously, no principle can be stated as to when an imitator has gone beyond copying the 'idea,' and has borrowed its 'expression.' Decisions must therefore inevitably be ad hoc" (Peter Pan Fabrics, 274 F.2d at 489). Courts and commentators nevertheless have developed a few helpful approaches. In Nichols v. Universal Pictures Corp., 45 F.2d 119, 121 (2d Cir. 1930), cert. denied, 282 U.S. 902, 51 S.Ct. 216, 75 L.Ed. 795 (1931), Judge Hand articulated what is now known as the "abstractions test": "Upon any work [...] a great number of patterns of increasing generality will fit equally well, as more and more of the incident is left out. [...] [T]here is a point in this series of abstractions where they are no longer protected, since otherwise the playwright could prevent the use of his "ideas," to which, apart from their expression, his property is never extended. Nobody has ever been able to fix that boundary, and nobody ever can. [...] As respects plays, the controversy chiefly centers upon the characters and sequence of incident, these being the substance.
As an aside, a related concept is that of idea-expression unity: where idea and expression are indistinguishable, the copyright will protect against only identical copying (Krofft, 562 F.2d at 1167-68). Herbert Rosenthal Jewelry Corp. v. Kalpakian, 446 F.2d 738 (9th Cir. 1971), presents a good example and discussion of this limitation. In that case, the plaintiff charged the defendants with copyright infringement of a pin in the shape of a bee encrusted with jewels. The court assumed the validity of plaintiff's copyright, but refused to find substantial similarity: "What is basically at stake is the extent of the copyright owner's monopoly-from how large an area of activity did Congress intend to allow the copyright owner to exclude others? We think the production of jeweled bee pins is a larger private preserve than Congress intended to be set aside in the public market without a patent. A jeweled bee pin is therefore an 'idea' that defendants were free to copy. [The] [p]laintiff seems to agree, for it disavows any claim that [the] defendants cannot manufacture and sell jeweled bee pins and concedes that only plaintiff's particular design or 'expression' of the jeweled bee pin 'idea' is protected under its copyright. The difficulty, as we have noted, is that on this record the 'idea' and its 'expression' appear to be indistinguishable. There is no greater similarity between the pins of plaintiff and defendants than is inevitable from the use of jewel-encrusted bee forms in both."
In any event, although EA's audiovisual work (The Sims Social) is primarily an unprotectible game, unlike the bee pin, to at least a limited extent, the particular form in which it is expressed (shapes, sizes, colors, sequences, arrangements, and sounds) provides something "new or additional over the idea" (see Goodson-Todman Enterprises, Ltd. v. Kellogg Co., 513 F.2d 913 (9th Cir. 1975)). Moreover, based upon an ocular comparison, while not "virtually identical" to The Sims Social, The Ville captures the "total concept and feel" of and is substantially similar to The Sims Social. Consequently, since this case is a far cry from those in which the defendant appropriated only the game idea, but adopted its own unique form of expression (see Durham, 630 F.2d at 914-15) or where minor variations or differences were sufficient to avoid liability because the form of expression was inextricably tied to the game itself (see Affiliated Hospital; Atari, Inc. v. Amusement World, Inc.; Clarke; Freedman v. Grolier Enterprises, Inc., 179 U.S.P.Q. 476, 479 (S.D.N.Y.1973)), I imagine that, like Atari, Inc. v. North American Philips Consumer Electronics Corp., 672 F.2d 607 (7th Cir. 1982), the court will find that Zynga infringed upon EA's work.
