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

from the game-over dept

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.

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

Candy Crush Goes Trademark Legal; Candy Crush Gets Trolled

from the gonna-be-a-busy-day dept

Candy Crush is the mobile game that finally got everyone to stop playing scrabble and pictionary with their friends during their morning commutes. It was developed by King.com. King.com then turned around and applied for a trademark on the word "candy" (for games and a variety of merchandise) and is now going completely bonkers in the mobile app space, sending out letters to any app on the market that includes that oh-so-unique identifier of a word.

Stories about legal threats over generic terms are a dime a dozen, but at least those fights tend to be over generic phrases or groups of words. Having a trademark in the mobile app space on "candy" is insane. But that doesn't mean some folks can't have some fun with it. Take the indie game makers who have started The Candy Jam, for instance, which is simply a game that requires players to create any sort of game that has to do with candy.

WHY? BECAUSE TRADEMARKING COMMON WORDS IS RIDICULOUS AND BECAUSE IT GIVES US AN OCCASION TO MAKE ANOTHER GAMEJAM :D

RULES: MAKE A GAME INVOLVING CANDIES CONSIDER USING THE WORD "CANDY" SEVERAL TIMES, ALSO "SCROLL", "MEMORY", "SAGA", "APPLE" AND "EDGE" MIGHT GIVE BONUS POINTS

Well, okay then. If an insidious game developer wants to go legal on a generic word, apparently some folks out there will give them all the generic word targets they can handle. The apparent leading game idea thus far, judging by the Candy Jam hashtag on Twitter, is an inventive romp called Candy Candy Candy. We've reached troll level three, apparently.

The good news, however, is that even the lawyers think this is silly.

IP lawyer Martin Schwimmer tells Gamezebo that the fact "candy" is such a ubiquitous term will make it hard for much to legally stick.

"Someone can't plausibly claim that they came up with the term TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES on their own", he says. "An incredibly unique trademark like that is somewhat easy to protect. Suggestive marks are protectable, but the problem is that third parties can claim that they thought up their mark on their own."

And yet many people may simply change the names of their games to avoid trouble, or else find themselves in a court of law having to defend the name of their game including a word that's about as common as it gets. Yay, trademark!

Filed Under: candy, candy candy candy, candy crush, candy jam, trademark
Companies: king.com