Zynga purchases Chefville.com domain name

Zynga pockets key domain name for fresh game.

Last month social gaming firm Chefville disclosed its newest games counting Chefville. But it didn’t have the Chefville.com domain name — until now.

Chefville.com was registered back in January 2006. Its current owner, an individual in California, appears to have owned it that whole time. (The oldest whois record recorded at DomainTools for the domain is in 2007 but shows the same owner.) The registrant parked the domain name at Sedo for many years, and probably thought nothing of it until last month.

Yesterday the whois record for the domain name changed to DNStinations, a proxy of brand protection firm MarkMonitor. Zynga is a client of MarkMonitor.

As of the time of writing the domain forwards to Google.com.