While I don’t think they’ll win, it will certainly cost Ubisoft a great deal of money.
This is defiantly one of those silly lawsuits that are oh-so-common, but this one is on the edge of legitimacy. I have a hard time believing that that choice of wording was an accident.
Well I hope they pay through the nose, fighters uncaged got a 4.0 on gametrailers.com. Infact almost everything for hte kinetic has been rated so low (4/5) I would classify it as a scam.
http://www.gametrailers.com/game/fighters-uncaged/13722
“You often find yourself punching with your fist.” Guess they didn’t spend much time game testing, lol! They made it sound like a version of Dragon’s Lair, but with a wet noodle for a joystick.
This whole scenario has me thinking though, of the implications for us small guys. The topic has come up before, of making a non-clone clone of some game you loved as a kid and it’s legal ramifications.
You can sue anyone for anything, doesn’t mean you’ll win. But Squaresoft would have deeper pockets than you if you tried to make a Final Fantasy non-clone clone.
No, it’s extremely tenuous and certainly not something that crossed my mind upon reading the copy. The words “Ultimate” and “Fight” are generic commonplace words and there is no reason that people wouldn’t bring the two together, children have been doing so for many years before any company was so arrogant as to try to trademark them.
In fact they should never have been allowed to trademark such a phrase in the first place and hopefully this case will result in a revocation, it was extremely rash. Any judge with common sense would immediately see how a trademark can only work as an isolated element, a logo or design. Commonplace words used within a sentence are pretty much unenforceable. If they were then you would find Apple suing a lot of farmers, supermarkets and normal folk for the use of the word “apple”. Context is everything, of course the system is fairly broken, in which case UBI will just have to change the wording to invoke the same meaning of apex or ending combat. The fact that they used “fighting” instead of “fight” makes this even more moot, “fight” and “fighting” are different words, with a trademark you only get the exact letters you give in the order they are given and often in the capitalization given, semantics are not admissible otherwise they could claim someone using “conclusive combat” or “biggest bout” was in violation of their trademark.
I hope that when they fail they’re forced to pay all of Ubisoft’s legal bills and lose the trademark in the process. They need to put a stop to this sort of thing.
You seem to have forgotten that Apple computer had their pants sued off by Apple records…and lost. That fight spanned decades, revived when the Itunes store came out. The original settlement deal from the first lawsuit had a stipulation that Apple would not enter the music business.
Makes it all surprising that they’re all buddy buddy now. I guess whoever runs Apple Records saw more $$$ can be had on Itunes than from a jury.
No, I’ve not forgotten, but two companies sharing the same name is somewhat different to the use of a word in a blurb or non trademarked tagline. Apple Records versus Apple Computer was two corporate trademarks fighting it out for ownership of a company name and the outcome was that neither could infringe upon each others trade field (Apple Computer subsequently did infringe when they entered the music business with iTunes), it was unenforceable basically, this is even harder to enforce as it’s generic (or at best suggestive) trademark versus standard language usage.
It’s a common language use, their lawyers should have spent some time doing research. That or they hope posturing will somehow help their plight, because I can’t see them demonstrating any confusion among consumers with this (which is what they will have to do), or that it diminishes the trademark when it’s already common language usage. Here’s some more info on Trademark law http://www.essp-law.com/trademark.htm
That part I found interesting, as most people who run websites or indie software devs seem to be under the impression that simply adding a @ somehow protects them under common law.
I guess the question I have, is that if you were as an indie dev make a clone of Tomb Raider…have the same gameplay, feel and a blonde who looks similar to Laura Croft but was named Laura Craft…called the game Burial Raider…what would happen?
I mean sure they could send the sharks after you and sue, but would they have legal standing to win?
They should hire Tim Langdell as their lawyer!
UFC has no confident that their game will win against Ubisoft… understandable…
Ridiculous. I am so sick of all these people suing just for the sake of getting some more cash. Let’s not forget, because of these crazy trials and jury’s, I owe Donald Trump royalties every time I say “You’re fired!” Because, that’s something that deserved to be trademarked as well. I already had no respect for UFC because their “honorable and respectable” sport of mixing different martial arts to have competitions looks just like street fighting cage matches. I hope the court throws them out. It reads as a simple sentence with a simple meaning. I think UFC is reading into things. I might take it more seriously if it said Ultimate Fighting Competitor or Ultimate Fighting Showdown, Tournament etc. But then again, they are different wordings as well even though they have the same meaning, but really, the meaning of the sentence was one that didn’t reference UFC.
What’s next, someone going to trademark “Large Pizza”? Then every pizza place has to change size names or pay royalties?
Edit: Oh I missed the section with ULTIMATE FIGHTING being in caps, which is treading a fine line, but my point remains. It seems they did have some intent for capitalizing those words on the back of the box, but it could just be like other game box art I have seen where descriptors are capitalized. Either way, I still think this whole thing is crazy.
It’s certainly pushing is and I hate companies trying to prevent people using common language.
But honestly,“Become the ultimate fighting weapon”?
Today you’re quite a good fighting weapon but tomorrow you could be an ultimate fighting weapon!
That’s horrible use of language and does anyone really believe that in the context they’re using it, and with the target audience they have, that they just chose those words because they sound good?
The law should not prevent people using the words ultimate and fighting together. But it is there to stop one person cashing in on another’s reputation (and potentially damaging it) - which is exactly what these jokers are trying to do.
I was skeptical about this, but I took a glance at the back of the box when I was at blockbuster today, and it is pretty blatant. It looks like this:
“Become the ULTIMATE FIGHTING weapon!”
With the words ULTIMATE FIGHTING in all caps, bold letters, larger font and in brighter color that the rest of the sentence that contains it. And on top of this, the rest of the sentence is in a color that is only barely distinguishable from the background. At first glance all you would see is the words “ULTIMATE FIGHTING” perfectly centered on the top border of the box. It was CLEARLY intentional, but that said, it still doesn’t make it illegal. Sure they are being underhanded about it but it IS common language that IS legal to use, and thats what they were counting on when they wrote the blurb.
But come on, if you were going to exaggerate a word in that sentence for effect wouldn’t it be the word “weapon”?
I remember a few movies which pushed that theme. Perfect Weapon (rather good movie) and The Ultimate Weapon (horrible Hulk Hogan movie).
Since Hulk Hogan has a horrible alimony payment to make every month, he should sue both the UFC and Ubisoft!
Just face it, I don’t know about the rest of the world but America has become a lawyer infested cesspool looking for a suit at every turn. Was only like a decade ago that some lady sued McDonalds and won a few million dollars because she spilled hot coffee on her wazzubi when driving. I mean wtf was that jury thinking?
I absolutely agree! It’s getting ridiculous. I can imagine a not too distant future in which there are so many trademarks you can’t speak or write anything without getting your pants sued off. You should not be able to trademark a phrase at all IMO. The only thing I think people should be able to trademark are words with no meaning that they have made up themselves.
Apple loves to sue anyone using the word “Pod” in their product.
“Pod” is now ubiquitous in the social consciousness as a device (multimedia or not) that’s mobile and can dock.
It doesn’t mean some sh!tty lil mp3 player. 
The McDonald’s case is misrepresented as a frivolous lawsuit, but it’s not really. See here. Short version: she wasn’t driving, coffee served way hotter than normal to the point of being unsafe, many other people had complained about being burned.
–Eric
Huh, this is bullshit lol. How can they sue someone for using some words, I mean “ULTIMATE FIGHTING” means ultimate fighting, it has a meaning, it’s not some meaningless word like Warcraft, Runescape or Mario which are somewhat copyrighted game names or something. So if I had a game and added “Ultimate Fighting Shield” item I’d get sued as well?
They will never win, they’ll just make fool out of themselves.
zombie resistance
a game based on
**** UNITY. ****
It has 3D graphics*, too!
- custom 3D engine!
What do you reckon, can I claim the moral high ground over those evil lawyers?