Quote: Original post by Mithrandir
Just want to point out once again, that if a company does not enforce a trademark against potential infringement attempts, such a lack of enforcement will be used in the future to show that the trademark has been abandoned.

That's just how it works. Yeah it's stupid, but he's required to defend his trademark or he risks losing it.

Just to say upfront i've found this incident to be quite a fascinating serious of events and have ended up reading forums threads along with articles/blogs for over 4 hours to get to understand the situation. I should also point out i have no inside knowledge here, just summarizing some of the more interesting points to try to explain why its more than a company 'having' to enforce their trademark.



Whilst pretty much everyone agrees its a stupid system, its not the system directly thats being questioned in this case.

Initially its about how Timothy Langdell went about it. Assuming the emails are genuine (and it looks likely) then it was very nasty, threats of legal action, quotes of millions of pounds etc. He could easily of protected his trademark without the level of legal threats he has resorted to.

To make matters worse, Tim then went on to claim copyright infringement claiming that Edge was a copy of their 1986 (ish) game BobbyBearing ( which itself is a blatant copy of spindizzy and marble madness), but no-one in the developer community has yet to agree with that stance, pass the similar isometeric viewpoint. This i believe is now why Edge has been pulled worldwide by Apple - if thats still the case, things keep changing :)

Then the fact that its a member of the IDGA board using nasty, heavy handed tactics against indie developers, kinda ironic. Not to mention the IDGA has been brought into massive dispute over this due to the apparent in-action of its board members and one providing support for him that goes beyond trying to be 'fair' and far from remotely being professional.

Quite honestly from the little I knew of trademarks I'm amazed how much leeway it has given him. It sounds and looks like he has the trademark for any use of the word 'edge' in almost any media, from computer games, to movies, to magazines and computer based company names. It goes even further to any computer game that uses the word edge in its title!

The Edge magazine looked like it licensed Edge from him for a few years. It states being 'under license' on he inside cover (issue 68), but mentions no names. Their legal team is meant to be investigation the issue and i would expect to see them a statement about it at some point. Yet there website is offline at the moment.

The further you investigate or follow the investigations of others into the Edge 'empire' and it looks more and more dubious. Tim has been called a trademark troll and so far the evidence provided backs this up. However it gets even worse with claims of fake Edge magazine covers being used in trademark disputes, equating having some creative input (Spawning) into many 'edge' offshots, which was little more than threatening legal action against others to ensure they 'licensed' the trademark from himself, etc.

Essentially what might have started as a simple trademark dispute has now called into question Timothy Langdell character and seriously damaged the IGDA reputation, if it had much before.

Not sure if its been posted but eurogamer has a pretty good 4 page article on the whole debarcle. Its definitely written with a bias for Mobigame (the underdog lets say), but does try to present the facts (and there are quite a lot of them) from both sides.

There is also TIGsource page which details the various investigations into the practices of Timothy Langdell

Quote: Original post by superpig
To be honest, I don't really care about Langdell very much; I care more about the total failure of the IGDA to react to the issue. There's a significant call for comment from the membership, and there's been - to my knowledge - nothing official from the board, not even a "we won't hold a meeting to discuss this." It looks pretty damning for the IGDA's ability to effect issues that are more important to us - like QoL, crediting, equality, etc - if they can't even handle an internal bust-up like this, something that is more within their power than anything else they do.

Me too. The IGDA board seems to be keeping quiet hoping the whole issue blows over, but I don't think it will if Mobigames' Edge is still pulled and with "Edge of Twilight" being released soon. The impression is that they care more about protecting their own than the issues that affect game developers.

Quote: Original post by Trapper Zoid
I can understand the need to register single word trademarks. I shouldn't be able to make a FPS and call it something like "Doom 4".

I would think someone calling a similar game "Doom 4" when they did not release a Doom 1, 2, or 3, at the same time as the current installment of "Doom" was at version 3, would be a rather obvious play to dupe people not paying attention. That wouldn't be OK.

However I'm not so sure I would have a problem with someone coming out with another game of some sort called Doom. If I decide to name my game in one word because that word's meaning somehow embodies my game in some way, then I am taking an inherent risk that someone else might one day feel the same need. I'm using it because of what it is and because its available. People need to defend their right to stuff they created not stuff they pilfered from society. Furthermore if I attack the word from being used in proper context because I feel threatened then I would actually being doing some level of damage to the meaning of the word that I chose because of its meaning, which seems counter logic.

There are a number of words that get used a lot in gaming because they just make a whole lot of sense. Sword, battle, war, chaos, etc. We can't have people picking them off. We certainly can't have people running out to grab the rights for a word or phrase every time they hear someone is working on a title called "whatever."

I would have a problem with someone other than id naming their game Doom (one word), because Doom is such as well known game. The name "Doom" is well established as a particular brand of id FPSes. It would cause confusion to have another game called Doom.

But I don't think there should be any issue with using the word Doom in a longer title: you could call your game "The Doomed" or "Dagger of Doom". It's pretty clear that these games have nothing at all to do with id's Doom, thus in my mind "Doom" and "The Doomed" are two different trademarks.

And I agree it would be pretty ludicrous if game titles couldn't use common words like battle, war, sword, fantasy, saga, etc. just because they've been used in part of other titles. I'm pretty sure trademark doesn't or isn't meant to work that way; it's there to provide accurate association to products, not as some sort of intellectual property grab-bag bonanza.

What is trademark for anyway? If I make a game, call it Doom, make it in an artistic style similar to id's and try to sell it off as Doom, then this should already be recognised as fraud, no? Why are the laws regarding fraud not enough that there is a need for trademarks?

Quote: Original post by Oxyd
What is trademark for anyway? If I make a game, call it Doom, make it in an artistic style similar to id's and try to sell it off as Doom, then this should already be recognised as fraud, no? Why are the laws regarding fraud not enough that there is a need for trademarks?

Well, trademark infringement is an attempt at theft. The reason the trademark is meaningful is so the consumer can identify the product. However, trademark law is very specific in that one must reasonably be able to mistake one mark for another.

This isn't a trademark dispute, this is an IP dispute gone stupid. A specific rendering of a word or series of words are eligible to trademark. The word itself though can not be. Even if you invent a word and market it into the lexicon the word itself can not be trademarked.

Quote: Original post by Trapper Zoid
Me too. The IGDA board seems to be keeping quiet hoping the whole issue blows over.

That's my impression too, however it looks like some of the members have managed to get enough member votes to call a special meeting to discuss the issue:

Quote: Do we have enough signatures for a vote yet? That's all that matters right now.

Quote: oh yes

more than enough, they are being sent to the board later today

(from here)

Since this is built-in to the charter, I think the board are actually legally required to call the meeting (although obviously that doesn't mean they'll get the outcome they're after).

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom
A specific rendering of a word or series of words are eligible to trademark. The word itself though can not be. Even if you invent a word and market it into the lexicon the word itself can not be trademarked.

I'm quite sure you can have a trademark on a specific word (I think that's what's termed a "standard character mark"); it doesn't have to be a logo. The strength of the mark depends on how well established the link is between the word and the product. Made-up words obviously have a stronger link - you're not likely to use the word "Kodak" unless you're referring to a Kodak product, for example.

(Of course, if your word gets too popular it becomes a generic term for the type of product in question, then you can lose the trademark that way).

Incidently I was going to use the Edgy trademark as an example as I just looked it up, but when I checked it again it's now changed status from "Live" to "Dead". It's been abandoned on August 3rd. That's new.

Quote: Original post by Trapper Zoid
And I agree it would be pretty ludicrous if game titles couldn't use common words like battle, war, sword, fantasy, saga, etc. just because they've been used in part of other titles. I'm pretty sure trademark doesn't or isn't meant to work that way; it's there to provide accurate association to products, not as some sort of intellectual property grab-bag bonanza.

Quite the contrary. Seemingly in today's world, intellectual property law of all flavors seems to be tailor-made for being being a grab-bag bonanza. And since it costs a postage stamp to send off a nasty lawyer letter to someone who looks like they MIGHT be infringing just a teeny bit, but who would have to spend many thousands of dollars in court cases trying to prove they're not, it's even easier to abuse.

Quote: Original post by evolutional
I find actions such as these, whether legal or not, are disgraceful for someone who's supposed to be helping the very people he's cutting down.

Is it true that the developer of "Edge" offered to rename the game "Edgy" and Langdell then trademarked "Edgy" to stop them?

Someone needs to repeatedly kick this guy in the testicles until he either dies, or forfeits all rights to the word "Edge". Same with the Monster Cable guys. Say, now there's an idea - name a game "Monster Edge" or something like that, just to piss off both parties.