King has trademarked the word “candy”
The company appears to be going after games with the word in their title thus crushing the competition
It’s no secret that the Candy Crush Saga game is very popular nowadays, so much that the company who develops it, King, has decided to protect its intellectual property by trademarking the actual word “candy”.
The filing of this request was carried out on February 6th of last year, where King.com limited registered claim to the word, when it comes to games and clothing. This request was approved on January 15th, 2014 and now five days later, reports are coming in from various developers that they’re being asked to remove their apps.
One example in particular is the maker of All Candy Casino Slots, Benny Hsu, who is outraged by this development. He says that a lot of devs are frustrated, because to them this decision seems ridiculous. This is a valid point, seeing as Hsu’s game shares no resemblance to Candy Crush whatsoever, other than the actual word in the title.
Hsu also says that he contacted King’s IP paralegal Sophie Hallstorm to discuss the matter further and instead of getting an apology, he was basically given the “Finders keepers” excuse. Hallstorm’s reply was that the use of “candy slots” in their app icon uses the trade mark exactly, for identical goods, which amounts to trade mark infringement and is likely to lead to consumer confusion and damage to their brand. She claims that the addition of only the descriptive term “slots” does nothing to lessen the likelihood of confusion.
The big question is, will King go after each and every single one of the games which has the word “candy” in its title? It doesn’t look good for those indie developers, who don’t have the money or resources to fight back and will be forced to change the names of their products just to avoid getting sued.
Source: Android Community
