I'm not quite sure how you could mistake The Ville for The Sims. Besides both games being set in a buildable house with interactive objects, the games are largely completely different. From what I can tell, It doesn't even simulate people.
Imagine if in the 90's the makers of Dune 2 decided to sue everyone who made a game which looked like their RTS. I don't think Warcraft would have stood a chance!
Yeah, ouch. At first I was thinking some of the comparisons were going to be reaching but when even the x/y scale of objects is the same, that's pretty blatant.
They're suing for The Sims Social, not The Sims. In all honesty, I think the title should be edited to read 'The Sims Social' instead of 'The Sims'. They're very different games.
In "The making of Warcraft part 1", one of Warcraft's developers says they used Dune 2's art assets as "programmer art" during Warcraft 1's development:
Imagine if in the 90's the makers of Dune 2 decided to sue everyone who made a game which looked like their RTS. I don't think Warcraft would have stood a chance!