Kinda touchy stuff, loved it. I hope its legit and that it spreads like wildfire.
even if it isn’t true, king is pretty lame for going after banner saga and other indie developers.
The saga continues… It’s pretty sad that things like this happen - let’s hope that something good comes out of that letter
It is true and legit:
http://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pno=91210162&pty=OPP&eno=9
He should team up with some pro-bono lawyers and sue the crap out of King.com.
He can easily win without a doubt. He is sitting on a legal gold mine that can land him tons of cash and the ability to ruin King.com and their attempts.
I agree. I mean, it’s entirely reasonable to presume that King.com made these moves without high quality (and high cost) legal advice.
I agree. It’s entirely reasonable to presume that expensive lawyers have never lost a case.
I’m not even going to begin to contemplate the dynamics involved in this case, but I think it’s reasonable to presume that they have taken into account the risk vs reward involved and I’d say there is very little of the former. What do they have to lose? (talking about King).
That’d be both unreasonable and irrelevant to the point i made.
How so?
Because whether expensive lawyers are infallible has nothing to do with it. The statement was “easily win without a doubt”. Even if he does win that statement could still easily be false.
In that case, irrelevant; but not unreasonable.
Anyway, isn’t it standard to protect your trademark against a broad range of possibly infringements, even if you didn’t think they infringed? This game is very darn close to the Candy Crush Saga, albeit predates it. If they didn’t pursue this, it could look like they aren’t defending their trademark. So just because they filed this doesn’t mean they think they would win, just that it shows they’re making an active effort to enforce their trademark. I could be totally wrong though…probably I am.
They did pursue it though, they registered complaints with the trademark authority against King’s trademarks. The issue here is that, if someone claims someone else’s trademark is infringing their trademark but the “infringing” trademark predates their own, then they’re the ones who are actually infringing, not the people they’re going after.
All the things King have talked about with regards to the Candy Crush Saga trademarks, from “protecting their IP from clones” to “stopping customer confusion” and all that, is just what the Candy Swipe guy has been trying to do, just without the platform of being a massive company which the whole world knows to do it from. Everything King has attacked other “infringing” games for doing to Candy Crush is exactly what King has done to Candy Swipe, only in a far more clear and noticeable manner.
wouldn’t CandySwipe being older than their game and trademark automatically mean that they lose the case?.
In a sane world - yes. In the real world of the f’d up US patent/trademark law, not necessarily. After getting their trademark contested by CandySwipe, an older trademark King.com is clearly infringing, they in-turn bought the rights to an even older trademark for ‘Candy Crusher’. So because they now own the rights to the older trademark, they can use that as leverage to say they have more of a claim on the word ‘Candy’.
I’m no lawyer, but to me It’s a bunch of bullshit legal maneuvering that shouldn’t be allowed.
Depending on territory, in a fair fight, I’d say so.
Generally (but not exclusively), if you have a product (or company named X) then it’s name is already a trademark, in the literal sense that it’s a trading name, and assuming you’re not infringing on an existing trademark. This doesn’t entitle you to attack other products with a similar name, but it can help when fending off someone registering the same name as a trademark, if not actually invalidate their application (which is more difficult).
However, that all applies to a fair fight (enter, CandyCrusher), and you don’t see many of those these days.
Even if he wins the legal battle, it will take years and a lot of money and sacrifice for him and his family. There is only 1 quick solution;
He should go see the main-stream media like Fox and pour his heart out in front of TV with his family beside him.
It’s really unfortunate that it came to that but if there is a way to make King.com suffer, it’s to attack their main consumer base which is not us, it’s the average joe.
Make it a scandal on national TV and it’s game over for King.com.
That’s the world we live in.
Oh and it’s going to be Obama’s fault, obviously
Exactly… it looks like King purchased CandyCrusher so they could own an older game with “Candy” and “Crush” in the title. Not cool, but probably legal.
Wow, he should. Man I hope he could at least punch back, by trashing their image, as they deserve.
A few forum users and fellow indie developers can’t do much. But the public opinion of million of people could be a b*tch, right?
The game industry sucks.
Business man study the market to dirty it and making more cash.
Disgusting.
I tried looking; I can’t even find the existence of a “CandyCrusher” outside these articles, let alone a ten year old game by that name.