Candy Crush Makers Trolled
Posted: Fri Jan 31, 2014 4:30 pmhttp://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense ... candy.html
The long and short of it is that King.com (I think?) trademarked the term "Candy" insofar as it is limited to the video game industry in Europe (apparently a US trademark is soon to come). So, as a consequence, there's been a deluge of games being developed by dozens of developers including--you guessed it--the term "Candy" as part of an online protest called the "Candy Jam."
Entertaining.
Anyway, since the entire point of having a trademark is to provide brand identity, and to do so requires protecting it from dilution, the Candy Crush devs now have a choice: Litigate against dozens and dozens of people trolling them, potentially wasting a fortune on trademark enforcement, or just give up on it and admit that the trademark is really stupid.
The long and short of it is that King.com (I think?) trademarked the term "Candy" insofar as it is limited to the video game industry in Europe (apparently a US trademark is soon to come). So, as a consequence, there's been a deluge of games being developed by dozens of developers including--you guessed it--the term "Candy" as part of an online protest called the "Candy Jam."
Entertaining.
Anyway, since the entire point of having a trademark is to provide brand identity, and to do so requires protecting it from dilution, the Candy Crush devs now have a choice: Litigate against dozens and dozens of people trolling them, potentially wasting a fortune on trademark enforcement, or just give up on it and admit that the trademark is really stupid.