Candy Crush Saga Dev Attempts to Block Banner Saga Trademark

[StewShearerOld]

Candy Crush Saga Dev Attempts to Block Banner Saga Trademark

According to King, The Banner Saga is "confusingly and deceptively similar" to Candy Crush Saga.

You may recall some <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/131495-King-We-Dont-Want-Everyones-Candy-Just-IP-Infringers>recent reports about King, the company behind the popular puzzle game Candy Crush Saga suing the developers of the app Candy Casino Slots for infringement based on the latter's use of the word "candy" in its title. "We believe this App name was a calculated attempt to use other companies' IP to enhance its own games, through means such as search rankings," said the company in a statement.

At the time, King only discussed plans to pursue legal action against supposed IP infringers in the iOS App Store. That said, it's recently been discovered that the company has, in fact, taken a much broader approach to protecting its software. Most notably, back in December 2013 King apparently filed an opposition motion to block Stoic Studios from trademarking its strategy RPG The Banner Saga. This was done on the grounds that name was "confusingly and deceptively similar" to Candy Crush Saga. Feel free to take a moment to digest that thought.

In the least, King apparently hasn't tried to extract any damages from Stoic and only attempted to block its trademark application. Even so, this has to rank up there as one of the zaniest legal actions we've ever seen come out of the game industry. I mean, The Banner Saga and Candy Crush Saga could literally not be more different if they tried. One is a tactical role-playing Viking epic and the other is a puzzle game about candy. The mind can't help but to be boggled by this.

Source: <a href=http://kotaku.com/candy-crush-saga-makers-go-after-the-banner-saga-for-1506188958>Kotaku



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[TheDoctor455]

Oh for fuck's sake.

This is the fake handicapped guy suing shops he'd never been to all over again.

 

[Micah Weil]

Well, way to jump into the DEEP end of the alignment pool guys...

 

[CardinalPiggles]

*Insert Laugh harder video here*

So what, no one is allowed to trademark anything with the word saga in it anymore because these cunts say so? If Stoic had called their game Candy Bash Saga, or something like that then fine, but The Banner Saga? Really?

 

[Crimsonmonkeywar]

Well you know what, I'm going to turn this into a good thing. I was tempted to buy The Banner Saga and now I'm most defiantly going to purchase it, and gift a copy to a friend.

 

[MrPhyntch]

I guess they should also trademark block LEGO Star Wars, the complete Saga, Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga, SaGa...

Seriously. Forget any other possible reform to the IP system of this country. We need a provision that if a company abuses their trademark more than once, they have the potential to lose all associated trademarks. This is absolute bollocks.

 

[dragongit]

Well you know what, I'm going to turn this into a good thing. I was tempted to buy The Banner Saga and now I'm most defiantly going to purchase it, and gift a copy to a friend.

You know what, I was on the fence myself. Now I definatly want to buy Banner Saga after my next paycheck. and perhaps give Candy Crush a bad review just to spite them, though I'd hate to give them ad revenue if I happen to click their game.

 

[EyeReaper]

Wow. this is probably the dumbest thing I've read all week, congrats, Candy crush.

Wait a second... The game is called Candy crush saga... run by King... OH MAH GOD HE'S GOING TURBO!

Captcha: See ya! See? Even captcha knows to abandon ship!

 

[Callate]

Congratulations, King; in one short move, you went from "that's ridiculous" to "channeling Tim Langdell".

From there, the path is clear: someone needs to stuff garlic in their mouth and chop off their head.

 

[Vigormortis]

King. The new Zynga.

As in, through a combination of customer exploitation, extreme corporate greed, copying creative content from others, and pursuing ridiculous; if libelous or frivolous; legal actions, they are going to dig their own fucking graves.

And frankly? I hope they do. Companies like King need to shut down.

The sooner the better.

 

[Snacuum]

Yeah for a while there I had respect for the devs of Candy Crush. I mean sure I don't care for the whole F2P business model and greedy tactics, but their public image was mostly just good old "hey we're just making another match-three game but we're putting in these features and hey now we're successful so that's cool".

and then this stuff started...

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

Because in this grand capitalist world of ours... you can buy the exclusive right to use common words in your branding! Seriously... what legal body actually granted these trademarks?

 

[Jaegerwolf]

King. The new Zynga.

It's like the universe saw Zynga going under and, abhorring a vacuum of douche game companies, birthed King out of the cosmos.

 

[Zeraki]

The more I hear about this company and game, the more I hate both of them. How did this Hexic/Bejeweled clone become so insanely popular anyway?

 

[Caiphus]

I actually had some small amount of sympathy for King when they went after that Candy Casino game or whatever. I now do not, and am slightly ashamed that I ever did.

Meep.

 

[Therumancer]

Because in this grand capitalist world of ours... you can buy the exclusive right to use common words in your branding! Seriously... what legal body actually granted these trademarks?

Well, I don't believe you can just copyright a word that way, but you can copyright a word in the form of a name tied to specific products and images. For example, I believe Tim Langdell's claim when it came to "Edge" was that he intended to label a series of games covering different subject matter under an "Edge" label, having released a racing game to cement it, using the argument that since anything could be under the "Edge" banner... like "Edge Extreme Fishing" or "Edge: Epic Turn Based RPG" anyone using that word for a video game could create confusion with his product line even if he was not currently taking advantage of his trademark. It was ridiculous, but if I remember the case correctly there were some technical reasons why he was able to do what he did and hang out for so long.

When it comes to this current situation, it seems ridiculous on any conceivable level, but I imagine there must be some technical merit to the case or there wouldn't be a case. Apparently there are lawyers who believe they can defend this under the right circumstances and given the right judge, otherwise this would have likely died a crib death before we ever heard about it, never mind apparently taking place on multiple fronts.

To venture a wild guess, I'd probably think that their argument against "Banner Saga" is that it's also a strategy game, with their puzzle game being loosely defined as "strategy" for these purposes. What's more they could argue that they plan to release a number of "saga" games with names before them due to the success of this one, and have filed some kind of copyright towards that end.

I'm actually a little more confused about the slot machine app to be honest, again to venture a wild guess, it might be that this is more of a separate case than we're guessing, perhaps some of the art assets (specific pictures of candy or whatever) are the same or very similar, with concerns that it could lead players to believe it's a sponsored product.

Any way it goes, I hope this ridiculousness dies out without doing too much damage.

 

[nightmare_gorilla]

what bothers me most about this is the potential damage to a promising IP and developer. either they can settle and lose a shitload of money or fight it in court and lose a mega shitload of money in attorney fees. that's usually how these trademark trolls work, they figure out it'll cost.. lets say 800 thousand dollars to go to trial and so they will graciously offer to settle for 750. those numbers aren't real but that's the gist of how they do it. a lot of patent trolls do it that way so I gotta assume this is kind of the same deal. it's a money squeeze and it's the sleaziest kind of business. I certainly hope they have the cash to fight this and then counter sue for harassment and get these bastards to pay their legal fees.

it's possible this is a different thing but honestly, this is like taking a picture of the mona lisa, selling a bunch of copies of it, then suing the creators of the simpsons over lisa simpson. not a perfect analogy but the amount of bullshit this situation is cannot be measured.

 

[Strazdas]

It makes me so sad noone has shoved King the legal side of this atrocity and put them out of business.