Monster Energy Goes After Indie Dev for Using the Word 'Monster' | Hacker News Reader

Monster Energy Goes After Indie Dev for Using the Word 'Monster'

thegamer.com

328 pointstype0176 comments

I don't understand how the beverage company could rightfully object to any game title like "Dark Deception: Monsters & Mortals".

It sounds like countless other games, and I can't imagine it being mistaken for a beverage.

Monsters are an idea going back in stories for millennia before the beverage brand existed.

Board games, and then video games, were inspired by these stories of monsters, to make interactive experiences around the ideas.

And the respective logos I just saw don't really look similar to my eye, other than both "horror-y/monster-y", but in different ways.

If the truth of situation turns out to be as stupid as is alleged, and Internet pitchforks are required, be aware that the Monster "M" logo does look much like a pitchfork (but again, the generic pitchfork came first, and is a widely used idea)...

It's not that they object, its that they have a legal team. That team's job is to look for opportunities to take money that is being left on the table. Obviously this is absurd, I'm sure the lawyers filing the claims personally think its absurd too, but if there's a 1/1000th chance of a payout then its worth it because the lawyers for monster are on retainer anyway and their costs are already sunk. They are probably actively trolling for opportunities like this all the time, otherwise they'd be leaving money on the table.

They’re not very good lawyers if going after an indie game is their idea of a money grab.

They’re more likely just conservative IP lawyers concerned about dilution.

They probably go after this and a hundred other things at once which they can do with their size. I'm imagining a madlibs lawsuit template they have a paralegal or even a computer script fill in details when a vaguely relevant target is identified. As the Canadian philosopher W. Gretzky said, you miss 100% the shots you don't take.

IANAL but I thought this type of action is used to argue in the future that the trademark holder is vigorously defending its use, even if it seems frivolous.

Trademark holders only need to defend their trademark in the product categories they have registered for that trademark. So, obviously a beverage with the word "monster" would be infringing for the drink trademark, they likely should not pursue for the games product category. I looked up their trademark on TESS: https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4805:lk... It is extremely broad, including every conceivable product category but is registered for "Monster Energy"

They might want to plan for the contingency that they might one day release some monster energy related game.

That's not how litigation works. It is not zero cost for the plaintiff. It is not all "sunk cost."

Besides that they usually hire outside counsel who are used to doing litigation, If that firm isn't based in the city where the suit was filed, then they hire local counsel who's appeared in front of that judge.

There are court costs, witness costs, deposition expenses... it goes on and on. It is definitely not handled all in-house by the Monster legal team.

And they should get slapped fucking big time for wasting everyone's time and money. Not okay.

> Board games, and then video games, were inspired by these stories of monsters, to make interactive experiences around the ideas.

Yep, BoardGameGeek has 10 pages of board games with 'Monster' in its title. They going to go after all of them?

Just since 2022 there's been: King of Monster Island, Monster Hunter World, Monsters on Board, Meeples & Monsters, Monsterpocalypse, Silver Coin: Age of Monster Hunters, Monster Pit, Cube Monster, Monster Inn, Funkoverse Strategy Game: Universal Monsters, Monster Rock, Shadows: Heroes & Monsters, Monsters and the Things That Destroy Them, The Witcher: Old World - Monster Trail, Boss Monster Big Box, Monsters, Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter, Monster Lands 2, The Night Cage: Monster Pack, Monster Marathon, Nine Worlds: Creatures and Monsters, Monster Science, Monster Munch, Beautiful Monsters, Monstersuppe, Monster Capture Race, Monsters Messed Up My Room, Hunting Monsters, Monster Hunter International, Cthulhu Wars: Smell Like a Monster, Stomp The Monster, Socks Monster, Monster Mouth, Monster Mash, Huck + Monster, Monsters & Minecarts, Yummy Yummy Monster Tummy, Ragnarok: Monster Card Collector, Monster Girl High School, Monsters of Loch Lomond, Making Monsters, Monster Zone, and a bunch of promos for the very popular game Kingdom Death Monster.[1]

[1]: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeksearch.php?action=search&objec...

In that list is Monster Hunter, a very successful and famous line of video games from Japanese publisher Capcom.

I think it might be interesting if Capcom decided to sue Monster Energy for trademark infringement.

"it's monster hunting time!"

The original AD&D Monster Manual from 1977:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_Manual

Monster Rancher

Yeah I am of the opinion that if you are going to name your brand “Monster” (or any other one word name) you are just going to have to deal with other people using it. This is like moving next to a massive international airport that’s been there for 50 years and complaining about the noise. Sorry buddy but at this point it’s on you.

If someone came out with another drink called Monster, fair enough, that's what trademarks are for, but otherwise absolutely. Use a word or phrase that existed before and you should have no hope of defending it as a trademark.

I heard their next target is the monster mash song..

Deception is also part of their company strategy and image they try to protect. But seriously, this is just broken trademark and copyright laws at work again.

See "Interstate 60" (2002), the town of lawyers episode.

>I don't understand how the beverage company could rightfully object to any game title like "Dark Deception: Monsters & Mortals".

It makes a bit more sense when you look at the game's logo, specifically the font they use for the word "Monsters"

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/dark-deception-game/images...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f7/Monster_Energ...

I don't see it? How do you feel about them going after Ubisoft's Gods and Monsters?

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GBzHJbeZpPI/maxresdefault.jpg

>How do you feel about them going after Ubisoft's Gods and Monsters?

Ridiculous overreach.

I had the same initial reaction to this story, but I could imagine a scenario where someone saw the dark deception logo and thought it sort of looked like the Monster energy logo. Having said that, I still don't think there's any real chance of confusion.

Yeah no, I’d assert that any similarities there, such that they exist, are due to them both drawing on the same prior art/culture. It’s kind of insane that Monster gets to just assimilate all of that under its wing for free.

Only loosely-related, but a little HN-ish...

A long time ago, the "trademark enforcement team" of a certain FAANG sent me a legal threats letter, about a domain name I'd registered.

The domain name had been intended for a satirical critique of early social media proto-influencer behavior, and couldn't be mistaken for a brand of the company.

I'd lost interest in writing the site, but, after some back&forth with them, I didn't like that the company I'd always liked was trying to strongarm domain names away from people. I thought this might be culture runaway from the founders' intentions.

So, I initiated a transfer of the domain name to the old university email address of their co-founder, and told them they'd have to ask him for it. And something about this being an opportunity for discussing don't-be-evil.

One of the issues in TM law is that if you don't defend it, folks can claim you're not using it.

Leads to perverse outcomes at times, especially in orgs big enough to have folks full time employed looking at such matters.

[Edit: I'm not saying this is good. Yes, cooler heads should prevail. I'm explaining what can lead it to occurring when it seems nonsensical.]

There is a limit though. Always consider "how would this look in front of a judge". There should be a cost paid for being overly litigious in this regard.

It's more like Xerox probably sort of liked that people viewed them as interchangeable with the act of photocopying, but eventually this had textbook consequences for their ability to prevent people from using their name for things they didn't like.

I personally would have suggested offering you a license to use the web address, but for whatever reason that ilk of lawyers prefer antisocial methodologies.

> eventually this had textbook consequences for their ability to prevent people from using their name for things they didn't like

Like what? I've never heard of such a use.

Ok, looks like Xerox pulled their mark back from being merely "generic".[1]

[1] https://www.justia.com/intellectual-property/trademarks/stre...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark

Xerox was eventually successful (at least in US), but there are cases like Bayer's Aspirin (surprise!) that were genericized.

Bayer didn’t seem all that concerned with defending Heroin™.

The Aspirin and Heroin trademark revocations were punitive and due to the war, not due to lack of proper defense.

That’s why you will see non-Bayer acetylsalicylic acid literally marketed as “Aspirin” but even though the Kleenex trademark is considerably weakened, you still don’t see competitors openly labeling their products with the name.

"Hey, can you xerox me a few copies of this document real quick? Yeah, just use the Canon all-in-one on my desk." Little clunky, but I'm certain it's been said somewhere/somewhen.

Is that enough to qualify as "things they didn't like"? I was thinking something actually distasteful.

Or a case where someone goes to a store to buy a "Xerox machine" and is sold a Canon? I can't imagine it.

Give the history between the assumed parties, I doubt founder would be trying to take that domain name. He lost a lot in court already

There are polite ways to go about enforcing this though. The Jack Daniel’s incident comes to mind: https://mashable.com/archive/jack-daniels-trademark-letter

Isn’t the trademark unenforceable in that case because Jack Daniel’s the drink and the book are in totally different markets and trademarks only apply if you’re competing in the same space.

A judge would likely decide that, sure. After you've engaged $$$ representation and wasted months of your time defending it.

> A judge would likely decide that, sure. After you've engaged $$$ representation and wasted months of your time defending it.

For stupid things like this, where the stakes are so low[1], I'd be tempted to represent myself[2]. It'll still cost me hours to appear in court, but it will be much less money than if I paid a lawyer and it will cost me a lot less than the other party[3].

TBH, every person of average intelligence should be taught the basics of defending a claim in their jurisdiction: what steps are involved, what paperwork to file at each step, where to file it, what deadlines there are, how to request extensions for deadlines, what constitutes evidence, how to get written testimonies under oath, etc.[4]

These things are not hard, and for low-stakes things there's a greater expected value in taking the gamble on self-representation than in hiring an attorney. Much of the time, for low-value claims, you can simply show up and request that the matter be moved to small-claims court[5]. Most courts actually would prefer to move a suit for $1k to a small claims court.

[1] Where the product made a total of maybe $1k, the damages are going to be under $100, and that's maybe too high too, because losing this would mean changing the game's name (or even only the font in the title), which is going to be cheaper than even 2 hours of an attorneys time. The only real danger is cost orders against the defendant, but these are a) rare, and b) decided by the court, using the context of what both parties spent. You aren't going to represent yourself and get hit with a cost order for $100k.

[2] I'm not a lawyer and I'm not in the US, but I've represented myself multiple times for things that were much less obvious, and defended all successfully. Courts aren't stupid; all you see in the news when courts make stupid decisions are the outliers. You don't see the thousands of sensible decisions a judge made each month.

[3] So it'll be an expensive lesson for Monster if they decide to drag it out. I'll lose billable hours for myself. They'll lose money and goodwill.

[4] I found, in my district, that the court is very patient with any person defending themselves and would take the time to explain all of the above even in session, and adjourn for the defendant to perform all the steps that were explained.

[5] Small claims don't usually handle trademark infringement claims, though, so not in this particular case.

You’re making the almost certainly false assumption that Jack Daniels doesn’t have a long history of publishing printed material with this design that well predates this author, including books.

Is that published material stuff that's for sale, or are you meaning flyers, adverts and that kind of thing?

No. Trademark does NOT only apply if you are competing in the same space. Yes, in general that is true. BUT you also can't make it look like a well known company is now competing in a different space. Take the dog toy example. It looks like a bottle of Jack Daniels, uses the same logo except it is called "Bad Spaniels" with a dog on it. BUT will the average consumer think this toy was sold by Jack Daniels? If so, that can potentially hurt the Jack Daniels brand, and is thus a no no. Now (I am NOT a lawyer) if they called it a Jack Daniels dog toy, but used a completely different logo and didn't make it look like a bottle of Jack Daniels, they may have a case that it isn't trademark infringment. In this case of Monster, I don't think there is any chance that anyone would think that the word "Monster" in the title refers to the energy drink (unless there was the triple slash logo used in the game) On the other hand, Monster Energy DOES own a trademark of the word "Monster" in the video game arena. (But with 1800 other "monster" related trademarks, I think this will be tough for Monster Energy to win)

Jack Daniels is currently embroiled in a Supreme Court case over dog toys, so I'm not sure they remember the old ways anymore.

https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-jack-daniels-dog-to...

I don’t know if we should be so casually derisive about this after reading the article. I kind of see JD’s side of things, enough to at least make the case that they have a legitimate claim. The case raises an interesting question about what constitutes parody, because the product in question certainly seems to barely straddle the line between parody and a legitimate attempt to profit off the trademark. I’ll be quite curious to see how the judges decide.

>So, I initiated a transfer of the domain name to the old university email address of their co-founder, and told them they'd have to ask him for it. And something about this being an opportunity for discussing don't-be-evil.

And it worked! They clearly did. And dropped "Don't be evil" from having anything to do with the company's present or future. How long between that and them selling ML services to the pentagon for kill-bots? :(

(Still a great story and I like your response, more power to you.)

I hear this claimed a lot. They removed it from their motto, but have retained it in their code of conduct, according to Wikipedia[1], and Alphabet has also adopted a similar motto. Whether you want to argue their actions match this, that's up to you, but factually, they did not drop it "from everything forever".

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil

An unenforced code is so useless it is barely worth mentioning except to express total and utter contempt.

In your view, how many times has google engaged in evil conduct with this "code of conduct" having had no say before, during or after the decision to be evil was made? Estimate it.

"Don't be evil" is long, long gone and it's a shame.

i have a strong hunch, dont be evil is an insider doublespeak. it probably means something very different among the upper alphabet echelon

It means something as technophilic 50-year-old Stanford CS students, and the people they hire. These are rational, educated makers who pride themselves on their intellectual achievement. They are drawn to the futuristic, fair, wealthy, egalitarian meritocracy of Star Trek and hope for a post-singularity future. "Don't be evil" has a clear meaning within these (valid) stereotypes of liberal/libertarian California and SV culture.

I cannot imagine what happens when you pickle such a view in infinite money for 20 years. It's probably not good.

The reminds me of the time a friend of mine told me her polo club was being sued by Ralph Lauren for using the word polo. I wish I was kidding.

* I believe there's something in trademark* law about being required to show some amount of effort defending your trademark. Maybe a lawyer can clarify. Is that getting translated by these corporate lawyers into harassing innocent people?

There’s nothing in copyright law that pertains to trademark. They’re entirely separate things.

But yes, trademarks can be invalidated if you do not defend them. Because the point of a trademark is to be a unique identifier for a particular good or service, to protect consumers against fraud or misrepresentation. If it isn’t a unique identifier because others are using it, then there is not a consumer protection reason to provide this exclusive use anymore.

I think people often miss sight that the reason for a trademark isn’t the same as copyright. It’s not a protection of a creative work. It’s a protection of fair commerce.

I meant trademark sorry. Personally I’m aware of the difference (having owned both) but it is a common point of confusion.

And yet I've never heard a single word about any trademark issues suffered by the maker of a certain word processor due to insufficient lashing out against everybody who makes unrelated use of the word they happen to use as their product name.

Now you have!

https://www.newsweek.com/microsoft-sues-mom-2-over-name-her-...

Thanks. I keep forgetting that use and use in a product/business name are entirely different things when it comes to this game if calling dibs.

PS: yet still Wordpress exist and many others. Is it ritualized to the point that they just need one token "defensive takedown" on the books every n years to prove active defense? In that case there might be some money in providing trademark attack as a service, so that trademark owners can go through the formalities of proving worthiness without risking all that negative press that might come with tackling an actual mom&pop, indie game author or similar.

Trademark erosion? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark#Trademark_er...

That’s it

2030: Splunk Inc and Meta are back in court today. Splunk Inc is being sued by Meta of the term "metadata" in their product which Meta says violates their trademark.

2031: Meta sued a group of Forza Horizon 5 players today, arguing the group infringed on their trademark when they used the term "Meta Build" in a livestream.

It's more like Apple suing an orchard for using the same word in their name... which demonstrates the real issue here is that Monster Beverages chose a word that is merely descriptive in an industry adjacent to their own market. Not an expert but maybe they would be better off making the scope of their market clearer rather than tilting at virtual monsters.

Apple did have to get a waiver from Apple Records in England, IiRC, which predated them by almost a decade.

It's important to note that this wasn't a waiver, this was multiple settlement agreements. Apple Corps sued Apple Computer at least four times:

- First in 1978, for merely being called Apple. They settled with an agreement to not enter into each other's businesses.

- Second, in 1986. Apple Computer put sound chips and MIDI ports into the Apple IIGS. Apple Corps sues claiming violation of the settlement agreement, because apparently just being able to play music makes it a trademark violation now.

- Third, in 1991. Apple Corps buys a new Macintosh and notices one of the system sounds is called Sosumi[0]. So they do. The settlement agreement now basically just prohibits Apple Computer from selling physical music.

- Fourth, in 2003. Apple Computer opens a digital music store. Apple Corps sues despite the settlement agreement clearly stating they only have rights to sell physical music with the Apple branding. They lose.

[0] Pronounced "So Sue Me"

I knew when I said IIRC that I probably did not remember correctly. It was only the 1978 settlement that stuck in my head.

Well, Microsoft successfully established "Windows" as a trademark, even though the term "window" was commonly used in graphical interface documentation for many years prior to their arrogating it.

Not "Microsoft Windows", but just "Windows". Disgraceful.

To counteract this, we need some form of vexatious litigation charge for copyright and trademarks - if you try to assert ownership over something you obviously don't own (as decided by a jury), you lose the original trademark you were trying to protect into the public domain.

The idea of punishing a mark holder by invalidating their mark presumes that trademarks exist as a benefit to the mark holder.

But they don’t. They exist as a benefit to consumers. This would be a misplaced punishment.

Trademarks benefit both consumers and mark holders. We don't want consumers to be tricked into buying subpar counterfeits, nor do we want infringers to exploit consumer trust in the trademark to steal business from the mark holder or to undermine that trust.

A trademark could benefit the company, but that’s a secondary downstream effect, not a requirement for a valid mark. Trademarks for horrible and awful products with terrible reputations are still entirely valid despite not being a benefit to the mark holder.

On the other hand, trademarks must provide identifying benefit to consumers, in order to be valid. Because this is the primary legal purpose and justification.

Then why is it so profitable for mark holders to sue everyone so broadly when there is no benefit to consumers?

No one thought Tony the Tiger lived in Exxon gasoline, and yet the lawsuit exists.

Because it is exceedingly rare that a law only does or is claimed to apply to exactly what it intends to do without other consequences.

There’s always some lawyer who will claim that a law applies even if it it found that doesn’t. In fact, this is entirely normal. Legal cases have two sides and only one will be found right.

The motivations of the lawyers in your examples are entirely different than the motivations of the lawmakers who wrote trademark law, and the judiciary that enforces it.

Let’s be clear: nobody created trademark law for the purpose of a cereal company getting rich off suing petroleum companies. In fact, those who established trademark law purposefully limited trademarks to a particular good or service exactly to prevent that.

So if trademarks aren’t helpful to businesses, not intended to be helpful to businesses, why file for one at all?

You're right, but I think the secondary effect is important. Hypothetically, if there was no intent to protect mark holders, the law could work differently: As long as the trademark is used for equivalent products, and there is no harm to the consumer, then it wouldn't matter who used the trademark. You'd think I'd be able to start a company to sell GE toaster ovens made in my personal back yard factory, if the end result was equivalent to what GE sells.

That’s why courts recognize trademark dilution as a valid reason to invalidate someone’s trademark. Consumers naturally start using prominent marks genetically as the difference between products disappears.

The practical problem is that there’s no real way to test this until a case is brought. You might be able to bring your own crock-pot to market, but unfortunately the only tool to legally evaluate whether that’s okay is the legal system itself. I’m not sure there’s a good way around that other than making the legal system more accessible in general.

> Trademarks for horrible and awful products with terrible reputations

... don't provide value to the consumer either, because no one would intentionally infringe on such a mark. Your argument works equally well against your own claim as the one you are trying to refute.

There are still opportunities for fraud and misrepresentation even for brands with bad reputations.

I presume your point here is that a trademark represents "authenticity", which is valuable to consumers. That's a fair concern, but clearly a large part of the benefit does in fact accrue to the holder - otherwise they wouldn't spend a cent protecting it.

Yes, but the legal construct of trademark does not exist for that reason. They exist only to facilitate fair commerce.

Didn't the brand line Polo takes its inspiration from the sport though, given the logo?

Yes exactly, that's what makes it especially ridiculous. Not to mention that trademarks are granted by classes anyway, and the sport and fashion products have nothing to do with each other.

For context, this isn't the first time they've done this.

From Wikipedia:

> Examples of such lawsuits include the aquarium hobbyist site MonsterFishKeepers.com,[55] Bevreview.com, a beverage review site that published an unfavorable review of the Monster Energy drink[56] and Rock Art Brewery from Vermont that marketed a beer named "Vermonster".[57] That case was even brought up by Senator Patrick Leahy in a study of problematic trademark litigation tactics.[54] Monster Beverage dropped the lawsuit against the microbrewery due to the adverse publicity the lawsuit generated.[58]

What in the world? I thought trademarks and copyright law were based on market and context? Now just using the word monster is too much for Monster Energy? They're lucky Bobby Pickett let them use the word Monster for their chemical water company if these things can be applied this broadly...

Yeah, a good lawyer will actually be able to get Monster to settle, or at least win in court. This is a huge reach, no judge will ever say games and drinks are too closely related.

Except... Monster sponsor a lot of gaming things, so they might have applied for and been granted ownership of "Monster" as a trademark, designmark, and copyright within the gaming market as well. Also, I think there's at least one Monster branded supercross video game. They also have https://twitter.com/MonsterGaming

Suggesting they only have drinks interests is not correct.

They registered "monster energy" and included games in the sea of producr categories: https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4805:lk...

>I thought trademarks were based on market and context?

They are.

Monster Energy holds trademark SN 97273630,[0] which covers:

"Downloadable virtual goods in the field of beverages, food, supplements, sports, gaming, music, and apparel"

...among many other things.

[0] (basic search for 97273630, change "field" dropdown to serial number) https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/search

Since when is "beverages, food, supplements, sports, gaming, music, and apparel" a field?

They're different categories. When you register a trademark, you specify which categories the trademark applies in. Those are the ones Monster chose.

An interesting side-note -- a company actually has to be using the trademark in commerce in the specified categories in order to qualify for trademark protection. This implies that Monster has products on the market of each type in the list.

>They're different categories.

I quite agree, which is why I'd expect them to be referred to as fields rather than field.

They apparently have a video game series - Monster Energy Supercross 1-5: The Official Videogame. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_Energy_Supercross%3A_T...

Owned and developed by Milestone I believe.

Just wait until they find out about the increasingly popular "Pocket Monsters" game series. It's all the kids ever talk about these days!

Or the classic Konami game "Monster in My Pocket" from 1992!

Isn't this the reason why Game Freak and Nintendo went with the abbreviation internationally? But they got sued anyway?

I wonder if they will go after Disney/Pixar for Monsters, Inc

Or the Monster Manual. They and Hasbro can duke it out.

Monster Cables. I thought they were the ones always threatening others when they use the term "Monster"

Whoever at Monster initiated this shit needs to lose their job.

Marketing should be jumping down legal's throat over this sort of thing.

I presume fellow trademark troll Monster Cables has struck a truce with Monster Energy?

Much like Monster Cables, if you think there might be confusion between a video game and your chemical water, then I am confident that your product tastes like ass.

Monster Energy, it's got electrolytes. Which as we all know, is what plants crave.

This lawsuit is the definition of frivolous.

It's the dumest trademark case since Condé Nast tried to suit a pub in the village of Vogue, Cornwall. That pub now has a framed apology on its wall.

It's a monstrosity of a lawsuit, all pun intended

I wouldn't be so quick to jump to that conclusion.

Monster has their fingers in many, many pies, from clothing to live events, esports (very relevant to a video game).

Here are two relevant marks, out of their hundreds: https://trademarks.justia.com/862/19/monster-86219332.html https://trademarks.justia.com/877/98/monstergaming-87798827....

None of their business endeavours changes the fact that they’ve taken a generic word that’s been previously used in video games (…and movies and songs and literature) and tried to claimed sole usage of it going forward.

That is obviously frivolously.

Nothing in trademark law is obvious.

Them having a case which is potentially legally valid, does not preclude the case from being frivolous in nature.

Please do not insult Brawndo by mistaking them for Monster Energy. That's just low.

I'm pretty sure Monster.com is in the list of trademark trolls for monster things.

there was a similarly ridiculous set of trademark cases with a common usage word with the online retailer backcountry.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backcountry.com#Lawsuits

glad this dev is fighting and hope they win. i get the deal with trademark protection but seriously, this kind of shit is beyond inane.

It baffles me how screwed the system is.

It’s an exaggeration, but you have to be genuinely afraid to found a company with Apple in their name. “Apple Farm” might get sued by Apple.

There should be a better process that involves a neutral party reviewing the claim and do sanity check if everyday names and items are used, before it actually becomes a lawsuit.

But instead we let the bullies win, because they have the money.

The judicial system is (supposed to be) that neutral party. You're trying to reinvent the judge/jury.

However, in lieu of neutralizing the massive financial disparities between parties, the judicial system as it exists today amplifies their effects.

You can trademark a common word, but you are limited for the product categories in which you have a product in commerce. So, Apple Computers has no justification to pursue trademark claims for fruit farms. This story is notable, because it is an overreach by Monster Energy.

And bluejeans - the ending of the 'our response' PDF is particularly satisfying https://www.bluejeanscable.com/legal/mcp/index.htm

Not quite as satisfying as Ian Hislop's letter to James Arkell (https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/arkell-v-pressdram) but still good.

Next: Garpax Records goes after Monster Energy, based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_Mash

Dang I was just making that joke but you beat me to it haha

Or Warner Bros Records: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_(R.E.M._album)

Great album, incidentally.

there's always a bigger fish ~ Qui-Gon Jinn

Wonder if the creators of The Pod should go after apple:

"Pod is a series of digital guitar amplifier modelers from Line 6."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pod_(amp_modeler)

I suspect Apple legal goes after lots of "pod" things but doesn't kick this sleeping dog.

A quick search of Steam reveals a long list of games that use the name Monster in their title even more prominently than Dark Deception: Monsters & Mortals does.

To expand on your idea, I tried searching "monster energy" thinking that maybe a fantasy game using an energy currency would show up this way, but I didn't see Dark Deception: Monsters & Mortals in about the first 200 results.

Then I decided to check out their page directly and I now believe this wholly comes down to the font used in the logo: https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/1266690/header...

I personally don't think it's close enough to cause issues but clearly Monster Energy does.

Monster Train is one of my most played games on Steam. (And on Switch, especially in handheld mode.)

And somehow I missed that it's on iOS as well - time to download that immediately!

Monster Hunter: World would be on the list but I played it on console.

Doesn't Bethesda do the same for the word "scrolls"? What's the most loaded game title using generic words that would tick off the most companies?

"Monster Scrolls: Backcountry Metadata"

Yep! Mojang were putting out a game simply titled Scrolls and Bethesda didn't like that, because apparently you can confuse 'Scrolls' for 'The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim'.

In this case, the product category is the same. While I agree that Elder Scrolls and Scrolls are distinct, it is at least possibly infringing.

USPTO are either incompetent or corrupt or both to allow trademarks on such generic terms. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re taking back handers.

Good thing mathematicians aren't making a y money: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_group

I don't know if it helps the legal case, but Diamond Multimedia used the word Monster for their 3dfx voodoo card, which I believe predates Monster Energy by several years.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/3d-accelerator-card-rev...

Wall that's a d*ck move. There are other beverages out there that contain caffeine, and Monster's logo ("trademark") is not to my personal taste, not to mention the beverage itself. I guess I won't buy it anymore. They should pay more to their designers and researchers and less to their lawyers.

Would it be cheeky to claim the Epic of Gilgamesh as prior art?

If you want to show the developer your support, you can pick up the game for just five bucks on Steam.

Just searched the App Store… lots of “Monster” games out there. Many have scary “monster” like logos.

Nowadays when you search lol its always league of legends when it used to be lot of laughs*. They are afraid one of this games becomes super popular and when you search monster on google there is not a single monster energy drink to be seen

Edit: * or laughing out loud

I feel like you've mashed Laugh(ing) Out Loud (still the common usage) and the sweeter/more innocent Lots of Love (from a time before the internet)

I am talking about what google outputs for a word. If you think about it Gooogle makes the battle for the meaning of a word more brutal than ever, as people look for words without context. If we were living in the old world this news would be insane, because whenever you would mention monster (the energy drink) or monsters (the game, at the game shop), the meaning would be clear by context.

In todays world there is no context, so i think Monster (the energy drink) is not being as irrational as it would seem by the tone of this news item

So annoying. Monsters-the-mythical-creatures existed in the public conscience long before Monsters-the-low-tier-beverage. There is no chance this is being done in good conscience, and I hope the courts punish this accordingly.

Not news.

Monster Energy has been suing every single company using the word Monster in their title. This has been happening for years. For every company you hear about them suing, there are 10 that are secret and were forced to change their name.

No joke.

Hey I was looking for a reason to break my addiction to the green juice. Thanks!

Ridiculous or not, even Microsoft lost similar battle. At that time (2014) I was aghast on how can this happen.

Microsoft's SkyDrive cloud storage service is now called OneDrive after losing a legal battle with Sky.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/home-entertainment/onedrive-is-new...

Source:

- https://twitter.com/VincentLivings/status/164106853131499520...

- https://twitter.com/VincentLivings/status/164120600707769139...

The submitted “TheGamer” article has an auto-playing video popup.

A local vegetarian restaurant in Santa Cruz called themselves McDharma's and McDonald's made them change it. I always thought that was strange.

Fun fact - Monster Energy is the best stock since its debut in the 1980’s. If you invested $1000 at IPO it is worth $663,500 today.

I guess the lawyers have some quotas to hit.

Does a judge ever look at a suit like this and just nip it in the bud, immediately ruling against someone like Monster without hearing whatever they have to say? I mean, it's just absurd and a waste of a court's time to deal with this stuff.

Interesting fact, Monster Energy is the best performing stock of the past 20y.

That's actually very interesting.

there's a lot of situations where a trademark owner has to go through the motions of challenging a similar trade identity, because the failure to do so could have negative implications in future litigation, allowing infringers to claim that the lack of defense amounted to constructive abandonment.

https://www.ce9.uscourts.gov/jury-instructions/node/235

See, this would be a good use of "influencers" on social media. Get them on board with putting out the word to boycott Monster Energy until they drop this.

"You have walked into the fangs of a lurking Grue" ... The use of the word monster in computing is far older than its association with energy drinks!

Don’t they remember what happened to Monster Cable?

https://www.audioholics.com/editorials/monster

I have stopped drinking this from today. I had no idea how aggressive and stupid they act. Now that I do I have no excuse.

I guess man was the real Monster all along.

Like some design teams, some legal teams also have to justify their existence with make work.

I’m just being a zealous advocate!

Were these stupid trademark laws even conceived through democratic means?

I wish I could go after Monster for using the word 'Energy'.

Dungeons and Dragons are fucked

As is Mazes and Monsters.

"Edge" all over again.

What’s it going to take to get Hacker News commenters to stop perpetuating the myth that trademark holders are required to be litigious assholes if they don’t want their trademarks to lapse?

Probably people posting some helpful information about that?

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monster

Hope this helps!

Not really.

This is a baffling response. You posited something very specific and interesting that other commenters are not touching on (that "must defend to retain" is exaggerated), but when asked about it, you responded with the same generic point as all the other commenters ("it's frivolous") - as though you had never even said the interesting thing in the first place.

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

But there is no logic or legal ground for trademarking the word "monster" or the green/white colours in a logo. It is all about bullying smaller companies using their much higher budget.

When you pay for an expensive legal team on retainer you probably need to get them to start bringing in money for the org to justify their size. From the article it seems like they just troll for any sort of putative copyright violation and just roll the dice.

> need to get them to start bringing in money

Suing indie game developers is not a way to do it. There's a good chance these lawyers need to be paid much more for the time of dealing with this case than the devs ever had available.

Maybe most are small fish, but maybe some are big fish too. Maybe catching all of these small fish gives you precedence when you do go up to face some big fish in the future, so the benefits to these costs perhaps will just materialize in the future.

Of course there is, is literally their mark of trade in their space. That kind of needs to be defensible to combat fraud.

What’s not okay is how it’s being “defended” here. This is just abuse.

thats the thing about trademarks you have to defend them afaik otherwise they are worthless. I would venture these stupid suits are there in case some drink company will make a monster drink the defence would be better. ianal

> A trademark owner doesn't need to take enforcement action against all infringement if it can be shown that the owner perceived the infringement to be minor and inconsequential. This is designed to prevent owners from continually being tied up in litigation for fear of cancellation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark

> perceived the infringement to be minor and inconsequential

What if there's no infringement at all? As is clearly the case here.

I considered pointing that out: this suit seems absolutely unnecessary, but as with most of us here, ianal.

> thats the thing about trademarks you have to defend them afaik otherwise they are worthless.

Well, that's what lawyers often say about trademark law. But, then again, their advice to to pay lawyers more money to deal with the situation.

The reality is not nearly so cut and dried. You do have to police a trademark to some extent, and you can lose it for not policing it. So, it's not like the lawyers are lying. But any lawyer recommending action like this to "protect your trademark" is greatly exaggerating the risk in order to increase their billable hours.

> ianal

Is this sort of self-disclosure really suitable or relevant here?

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