Candy Crush creator abandons 'candy' trademark efforts
polygon.com
polygon.com
Game mechanics are not trademarkable, and its a huge benefit for the entire industry. Studios steal from eachother and make incremental improvements, which means a lot more variety in genres, more choices for consumers, and a greater commitment to quality. Still, big studios try to weasel their way into exclusivity through trademarks.
I say don't hate on King.com for their past actions, reprimand them for trying to change the rules of the game once they reached the top of the hill.
I agree that there's not much to be done, and should not be done, about copying a game's mechanics and attempting to improve upon them. But part of the accusations are cloning art assets which can have consequences up to a certain point. I think a combination of cloning art assets in accordance with their respective game mechanics should be an issue in this case, whether the law supports this notion I have no idea.
Keep in mind that King purchased an app created before this guy's was released and responded using his own complaint against him. It would seem that gives some credence to the guy's original complaint.
http://metro.co.uk/2014/02/13/candy-crush-saga-makers-to-sue...
(not that I'm defending King in their douchebag tactics)
Lets recap the CandySwipe Saga[1]:
- The creator does exactly the same thing than most people accused King.com of doing: Ie. blocking someone's trademark application because they both have the same word in it (here "Candy").
- They both have a blue "circle" as an icon (I'm sorry, but the others one have nothing in common except they are all candies, somehow)
- The games have very little in common mechanically. CandySwipe is about selecting multiple adjacent candies while Candy Crush is about permuting multiple candies so you can make combos.
Because, yes, these games have really nothing in common, except they are about candies. If anything, the only one who could have something of a claim is Bejeweled's creator, Pop-Cap.
If anything, Albert Ransom (who got quite the name here), only got what he was asking for when King bought Candy Crusher and so had a legitimate response, since Candy Crusher is older than CandySwipe.
King.com is certainly not a saint, but Ransom is just freeriding here because he got a good story.
[1] I had to do this one :p
So only half the battle won then.
Since the original story broke I've been thinking that I would have granted the Candy trademark, but perhaps I'm being too short sighted.
To my British ear candy isn't a common word at all. I say this understanding that the word is common in American English(candy store, candy bar, etc).
The only candy usage examples I can think of are the non-hyphenated Candyfloss(Cotton Candy to Americans), and the even weaker related use as a process as in "candied fruit".
Please point out that I'm wrong. It has been niggling me for a couple of weeks now, and I suspect I must just be looking at this the wrong way.
Edit: Remembered Candyfloss → Cotton Candy the moment I hit send.
So it is in some use, but not that common.
Personally I object to anyone that tries to trademark a single word of our shared language. They shouldn't be able to fence bits off like that, they should have to make up their own word if they want it trademarked.
I'll make a U-turn here and say that I agree with you about using made up words, but for a different reason. I'd probably rather see random non-word brands like PreBarpTzoh, than keep having to remember region specific names for trademark reasons. Lynx/Axe is the example that immediately springs to mind, a future Candy Mush Tiger and <insert non-EU name> could be another.
It's pretty common but not to refer to hard boiled or jelly sweets. It has been co-opted, by analogy with sweets, to refer to a particular colour palette - as such is often used when referencing that (eg in cosmetics); you'll probably recall the candy-coloured iMacs.
It's not however commonality in general parlance that is the relevant measure - candy is and has been used in video games for a while to refer to brightly coloured shapes. King's use (since 2012) isn't original and so isn't distinctive enough to indicate the origin of computing products [and others in the relevant TM classification areas] bearing the title "Candy" is King.com, Ltd..
If it were on commonality in street parlance then candy would be pretty common among younger generations that are more influenced by USA culture.
Saga? They might as well apply for "game" as an RTM.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/01/23/candy-crush-...
Square's ongoing SaGa series has been around since the late 80's.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SaGa_%28series%29
Then there was Panzer Dragoon Saga, Lego Star Wars : The Complete Saga. Surely there are more.
Ridiculous
Trademarking "Candy Crush Saga" makes sense because that's the full name of the game and is not a common word or phrase.
Trademarking "Candy" is absurd. This means any game that has the world candy in it is suddenly subject to litigation by King. Candy is a common word, and I could have a game called Unicorn Candy Attack and clearly that's not going to cause confusion with Candy Crush Saga.
ooh, looks like they replaced 'candy' with 'sugar': https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/all-sugar-casino-slots-jewel...
(as a side, i'd love to see engineers account for their time in 5 minute increments before complaining about lawyer billing practices. I would be surprised if it wasn't the case that on a salary / number-of-hours-really-worked-per-year, most IP lawyers make a lot less than most engineers)
YYYYYEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH