Mobigame talks to Develop as EDGE returns to the App Store
French independent developer Mobigame has finally reached the end of an exhaustive trademark battle surrounding its iPhone game EDGE, with the award-winning puzzle title returning to the App Store after a prolonged legal hiatus.
Yet Tim Langdell, the man who sought to take EDGE down, has found his pugnacious trademark chasing place him in the crosshairs of one of the world’s biggest publishers, Electronic Arts.
Speaking to Develop, Mobigame CEO David Papazian expressed his joy at EA’s intent to fight Langdell over his controversial ownership of the word EDGE.
“We are really happy to see what EA is doing for the community,” said Papazian.
EA believes that Langdell’s Edge Games is a dormant trademark, due to a lack of content being produced under the name.
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Mobigame, despite receiving approval from Apple to get EDGE back up on the App Store, remains cautious of Langdell.
“We don't know what will happen now,” said Papazian. “We have the approval of Apple, but we did not sign any deal of any kind with anyone to make this happen. We hope everything will be ok now, but the stress is still here.”
Papazian added that he and Mobigame are “very grateful to the community.”
“All of you did an amazing work,” he said, “and morally it was very important for us and the other victims.”
I've recently set up and trademarked a couple of new game development companies myself 1. "WAR" 2. "FIGHTER" 3. "BALL" 4. "BAND" and 5."GEARS"....... what do you reckon? We won't make any games, but woooohooo Rodders, this time next year.........
There's absolutely nothing wrong with setting up a company, and then applying a trademark to that name.
There's nothing wrong with calling a product, company or service whatever you want (as long as it ain't offensive.)
Langdell's discredited for being a troll about his trademark rights and not letting things slide in the spirit of helping the community.
Please, for the love of god, stop trying to joke about the trademark process itself. It's immature and embarrassing.
No wonder Kotick wants to get his devs out of their bedroom brains and learn a thing or two about business.
Come on, it's quite clearly a dig at the Trollmeister
and not the process....der. But thanks for clearing that
all up for us nonetheless. My hero.
@Matt_T - uh, yes there is. You can't just trademark words without actually using them in commerce. Under patent law, you can patent an invention (or buy the patent) and just sit on it without actually commercially exploiting it. See, e.g., patent trolls. The same is not true for trademarks. You can't just be a "trademark troll" without using the marks in commerce. EA will win this fight. Easily. Langdell is just intimidating people into paying him license fees because he's betting they can't afford to litigate the validity of his marks. Well, EA can.
OK, it's one thing to trademark a made up name like "Electronic Arts", "Bioware" .. it's a new distinct word. It's not used in every day language, it's not public domain, someone thought it up.
No one should have the right to allocate a public domain word that has been around for centuries to some guy and his company.
I strongly believe that this sort of practice should be off limits - I support any company that fights this malpractice and acts to reverse the trademark of a public domain word. GO EA!
Probably should state the issue of Apple, as everyone does. True Apple is an English word in common use. True that it falls into every single criteria as Edge, except for 3 fine details: Apple is in active commerce and it does not hunt down every user of the word "apple" unless it's clear that it's infringing on their company (such as, having the same logo, font, product, etc...). They're not gonna sue a farmer because he sells actual Mcintosh(Mac) apples. And even when they do, they at least have some Hard Evidence to back them up. Langdell has goated, prodded, poked, and done every other annoying thing that borderlines (and crosses) Illegal.
Oh and let's not forget: the legality and legitimacy of his trademarks are in dispute. This might not even be a case of trademark laws, but simply extortion and threats.
Well, distinct word or not, I think that EA has a good point with dormant trademarks. If all you're doing is squatting on your trademark like a vulture, ready to pick off and sue the pants off unsuspecting victims, then, that trademark should be investigated. There should be a unanimous law in all countries that gives restrictions to trademarks. Mainly as EA pointed out, if nothing is being produced of a certain level of significance under a trademark for a specific amount of time, say 15 years, then it is deemed dormant. So if a trademark is dormant and some company comes along and creates a product with the same name, they should be entitled to that name. The fact that there are billions of products out there made by hundreds of thousands of companies, no one should be allowed to cling to a name or a word if they don't do anything with it for a good while.
If Coca Cola went out of business or say the company quit and the trademark was owned by just one person who didn't do anything with it for as long as Langdell didn't do anything with "Edge", would it cause harm if someone else made a new product called Coca Cola. After 15 or so years, no one would ever remember the old Coca Cola (unless they've been around for 100 years). No one remembers Edge or cares for the old crappy games that came from Edge. Also, Langdell's "Edge" is used as a company name. Papazian created a PRODUCT (game) called Edge. Two different things right there. If Langsmell hadn't been trolling or made a fuss about Mobigame's use of the word: Edge, I would never have heard of Tim Assdell, nor would I have ever known of his DORMANT company, nor would I ever have cared about any of his contributions or who he was as he has NO positive significance in the gaming industry. Also, Bobby Bearing? Really Tim!? If Bobby Bearing had just come out, I wouldn't play it or look at it, based solely on its extremely uncreative and ridiculous name. Just because Edge happens to be blocky and isometric like yours and hundreds of other similar isometric games out there... I can't see the resemblance.
Let me pick up on a number of issues here: continued use of Edge as a TM, the Apple comment and my opinion!
Langdell claims he continues to license the use of Edge as a trademark, most famously to Edge magazine. He could very well be able to argue that the Edge trademark is still in active use. As I'm not a lawyer, I do not know whether it matters that he only seems to license the trademark, and not actively use it himself.
To be honest, when I first heard of the game, I thought it had some relation to Edge magazine. Remember that trademark protection is there to protect the consumer from confusion over products. That this confusion could occur may work against Mobigames.
The example of Apple being a real word trademark is a very ropey example, given that it was owned by the Beatles (Apple Corps) and after a lot of legal wrangling, both sides agreed that it was ok because Apple Corps are clearly in the music domain and Apple Computers are clearly in the technology domain. Of course they came to loggerheads again when Apple started selling music!
Remember Langdell only holds the trademark for the use of Edge in video games. In a lot of other domains (eg. the sale of kitchen utensils, I imagine) the word edge is probably not trademarked and can be used as normal.
Finally, I think it's cool that EA have added some clout to this as Langdell seemed to be preying on indies and people he knew he could win against. However, continued use of the Edge trademark (on the magazine, mostly) might be enough for him to win. It's no foregone conclusion, despite how ridiculous it is.
Langdell got there first and registered the trademark within games. They're a bit like domain names. No-one complains that edge is a real word, so no-one should be allowed edge.com as a domain!
