January 13, 2014 at 12:24 pm
Candy Crush Saga, the match-three puzzle video game, has officially become the most popular game on Facebook, with an average of more than 57 million Facebook daily users. Even if you have never played it, you have, at least once, seen a friend obsessing over the game or spent time deleting invites to the game on Facebook.
Naturally, the developer of this insanely popular and dominant game would want to cash in on this success as much as possible. The developer company, King, has recently filed a trademark claim for the word “candy” in Europe.
King gained the trademark rights to the word “candy” in the United States, but dropped the claim after gaining IP rights to the game Candy Crusher, a predecessor to Candy Crush Saga. They feel that between the rights to Candy Crush Saga and Candy Crusher, they will be able to protect their IP rights in the US market.
However, they are still trying to gain trademark claims to the word “candy” in Europe. This decision brought King a plethora of negative comments and actions. Small game makers went as far as bombarding app stores with false games containing words like candy, crush, saga, etc. The public opinions is that trying to trademark a simple enough word like “candy” will bring about a widespread prosecution of smaller game makers. That way, King will almost have a monopoly in the app stores, and in a wider market.
What will happen to King’s claim is yet to be seen.
Source:
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/230992
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/26/king_pulls_us_candy_trademark_attempt/
