The company behind Candy Crush Saga has withdrawn its trademark application for ‘Candy’ in the United States, according to documents filed with the US Trademark Office yesterday.
King, the company behind Candy Crush, filed for a trademark on the word ‘Candy’ last year, which caused a bit of a stir in the world of gaming, as, well, it’s a bit silly to imagine one company owning the rights to any application with the word ‘Candy’ in it. Last month, some cheeky game developers launched the CandyJam, a game jam devoted to making video games with the words ‘Candy’ and ‘Saga’ in them.
Yesterday, King filed for abandonment of the trademark in the United States. When reached by Kotaku, King confirmed the trademark abandonment but declined to comment.
Thanks Ian!
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9 responses to “Candy Crush Makers Don’t Want To Trademark ‘Candy’ Anymore”
So that’s “Candy” being withdrawn, but does that also include withdrawing “Saga” or is that a different filing? I.e. Are they still objecting to The Banner Saga?
Their trademark for ‘Saga’ apparently has already been approved and is passed the stage where it can be appealed.
It wasn’t the trademark that annoyed people, it was him taking advantage of it to try and shut down other people.
Well, the latter identified actual victims of this trademark abuse issue.
But his trademark trolling was unreasonable to begin with and sat poorly with a lot of people.
Yeah, in the big scheme of things, these guys were going to unreasonable lengths to get a piece of legal protection which – in the mobile market – is in all practicality about as useful as an extended warranty.
Doing it to stop cheap Chinese knock-offs in the mobile space… Pfft. Those businesses breach copyright intentionally as a design goal, with the overall gameplan of fleecing as much money as they can for as long as they can, riding on someone else’s coat-tails, until someone actually notices them and calls the lawyers, at which point they burn it all to the ground, mea culpa, and do it all over again.
Having better tools to deal with them if they don’t cease-and-desist is pointless when to them, cease-and-desist is the expected end-game they plan toward.
I’m sure that Iggy Pop & Kate Pierson are relieved by this news.
Well. this is good news, right?
Sort of. It’s only in the US, and there’s still no word on what’s happening with the “Saga” trademark. It’s a start though.
The trademark was only withdrawn in the US. Their Candy trademark in Europe still applies.