'Candy' Trademark Bully King Gets Trolled In Exquisite Fashion By 'Trademarkville'

from the game-over dept

Thu, Mar 6th 2014 5:22am — Karl Bode

As recently noted, Candy Crush Saga maker King recently decided to back off their absurdly broad trademark on the word "candy." Instead, King chose to be obnoxious in other adventurous ways, recently acquiring an older, more specific trademark for the phrase "candy crush" that they're now using to bully other game makers for little to no coherent reason. The company is busy continuing their trademark abuses of the word candy over in the EU, and they're also continuing to bully Stoic, makers of the strategy-RPG The Banner Saga, for simply using the word saga.

We've also explored how some game makers have been creatively trolling King to bring greater attention to the absurdity of King's behavior. Like the indie developers behind the game Candy Jam, in which users are encouraged to create any sort of game with the word candy in it. But the award for most creative trolling attempt now has to go to the makers of Trademarkville, a game in which you're forced to decipher a King-lawyer crafted labyrinth of absurd trademark-constricted language for points. The game describes itself as such:

"In the magical town of TradeMarkVille every uttered word is instantly trademarked by the King's wizard-lawyers and banished from language. People are forced to devise increasingly bizarre ways to express their thoughts. Ordinary communication becomes a puzzle, prose becomes poetry. Will a new sense of understanding prevail against the sorcery of intellectual property?"

I'm not very good at it, but that appears to be the point makers Molleindustria and Mikhail Popov were trying to make about the royalmonarchnobodylikes.

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Filed Under: candy crush saga, candy jam, trademark
Companies: king, stoic

11 Comments

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John Fenderson (profile), 6 Mar 2014 @ 6:09am

That sounds hilarious
Unfortunately, it requires not just a login to play, but that you use facebook or twitter to do it. So it's invisible to me.
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- JustMe, 6 Mar 2014 @ 6:33am
  
  Re: That sounds hilarious
  I was curious enough about it to create a fake twitter account. It's not just the normal words that are "trademarked": you get to invent a new description to describe something (e.g. twinkly thing for star). As soon as someone guesses what you mean, all words in your description are instantly trademarked as well, so no-one else will ever be able to use them.
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  - Anonymous Howard (profile), 6 Mar 2014 @ 7:19am
    
    Re: Re: That sounds hilarious
    are you @firage?
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    - JustMe, 7 Mar 2014 @ 5:20am
      
      Re: Re: Re: That sounds hilarious
      Nope, although I don't remember the actual name at the moment. It's something with 77 in it.
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- Anonymous Coward, 6 Mar 2014 @ 8:35am
  
  Re: That sounds hilarious
  I came to the same conclusion within about 5 seconds... this thing is as good as non-existent.
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Coward, 6 Mar 2014 @ 6:37am

Tradmarkville
I like how you can only log in through facebork or twit
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- Anonymous Howard (profile), 6 Mar 2014 @ 7:06am
  
  Re: Tradmarkville
  Who cares, make a fake account as I did.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 6 Mar 2014 @ 8:37am
    
    Re: Re: Tradmarkville
    I'm not sure there's such thing as a "fake account"... unless you're intentionally creating a new account for everything you sign up for, and using a new IP address every time, all of your "fake" accounts are linked, and they have been used for real purposes.
    
    Congratulations.
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    - Anonymous Coward, 6 Mar 2014 @ 9:10am
      
      Re: Re: Re: Tradmarkville
      Yay semantics!
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      - Anonymous Coward, 6 Mar 2014 @ 9:20am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Tradmarkville
        It's not semantics, it's reality.
        
        Creating a "fake account" to access everything that requires said account, makes it a very real account, in the end. Just because you're not using it to actually send tweets or follow people, doesn't make it less real as far as the companies tracking your activity are concerned.
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        Anonymous Howard (profile), 7 Mar 2014 @ 12:06am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Tradmarkville
        Just because you're not using it to actually send tweets or follow people
        
        Well, I couldn't describe what "fake" would mean better. Perhaps I could hack facebook's authentication to let me in without a valid account, that would be fake enough for you?
        
        Also: you don't give any personal information out by creating an account, only when you use it to it's intended purpose (find me on facebook: Vasas Elem�r. You won't know me any more then you do now.).
        As to IP tracking: that's not worse than a tracking cookie. Boo fuckin hoo.
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