With Zynga gearing up for an IPO, it was probably in everyone's interest to get this settled and keep any doubts from investors minds. The company's sent Betabeat a joint statement, “Zynga and Vostu have settled the copyright lawsuits and counterclaims against each other  in the United States and Brazil.  As part of the settlement, Vostu made a monetary payment to Zynga and made some changes to four of its games. The parties are pleased to have settled their disputes and to now put these matters behind them.”

Twenty-five percent of internet users in Brazil play Vostu games, making it by far the number one social games company in Brazil, which is a booming market, and the  fourth-largest social games developer overall. Vostu also counts some real  heavyweights among its backers, including Accel Partners, Tiger Technology Global Management, Intel Capital and General Catalyst Partners.

The bigger Zynga's IPO, the more attractive Vostu will look when it comes time to go public. Everyone wins when you play together.

Vostu was co-founded by Josh Kushner, one of New York's most active angel investors, and, full disclosure, a backer of Betabeat.

Zynga writes that Vostu has copied, "all of our key product features, product strategy, branding, mission statement and employee benefits lock, stock and barrel."

As evidence, Zynga produced some side by side comparison of their games and Vostu products.

From the arrangement of the buttons to the avatars of starting characters to details like small gameplay bugs, there are a number of striking similarities between the titles produced by the two companies.

From Mafia Wars to FarmVille to Cafe World, Zynga has always stolen from smaller competitors. They have copied key elements of design, user interface and game play.

And that seems to be the crux of Vostu's defense. "Zynga has been accused of copying so many games that they've sadly lost the ability to recognize games like ours that are chock-full of original content and have been independently created. Zynga's anti-competitive effort to bully us with a frivolous lawsuit--especially when we have some of the same key investors--is pathetic."

There is no small hypocrisy in Zynga suing a company for copying the structure of its games. But considering the degree to which the products resemble one another, will the "they started it" defense hold up in court?