Mobigame changes game name to Edgy – a title which Langdell is on record for favouring
In what is increasingly looking like an arms race between an IP owner and trademark holder, Mobigame has managed to put its breakthrough iPhone title back on the App Store.
This will mark the third time the game has appeared on the App Store, following an exhausting trademark dispute between Paris based developer Mobigame and bellicose trademark owner Tim Langdell.
Edge is once again on the App Store because it has been renamed Edgy – a title for the game which Langdell went on record as not opposing.
Speaking to Develop last week, a representative for Edge Games – thought to be Langdell himself despite claims to the contrary – indicated that naming the iPhone title Edgy would resolve the scrupulous trademark disagreement.
“Back in May [Mobigame co-founder] Papazian reached a settlement agreement with us to rename his game Edgy,” said the rep, “which deal he is on record as then later reneging on.”
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Now with Mobigame renaming the title Edgy, the friction – at least in terms of legal matters – between Langdell and Mobigame appears to be over.
Papazian did not "reach a settlement agreement" with Langdell for Edgy. Papazian mentioned Edgy, Langdell then claimed he would oppose Edgy and then tried to register Edgy himself. Langdell then abandoned the Edgy mark registration because it is illegal for Langdell to try to register a mark that he knows someone else mentioned first. Also because at the time Langdel was getting a lot of negative press and was being forced out of his IGDA board position. Papazian then correctly and rightly registered Edgy. There is none of this misrepresented "settlement agreement" that Langdell claims. In short Langdell is again misrepresenting the truth.
Indeed, according to Langdell's own account:
http://edgegames.com/mobigame.htm
First he claimed that EDGY was basically the same as EDGY, and then he claimed that Mobigames would have to license EDGY from him, and apparently illegally went and registered it himself, despite knowing that Mobigames intended to use it.
Excerpts from his emails or May 2009:
"On the contrary, we would very strongly oppose your use of EDGY which is clearly just adding the "y" sound to the end of our famous trademark EDGE."
"we will register the mark EDGY in our company name and license it to you free of charge with you registering EDGY in your company name in the UK, I believe we have a deal for at least the US and UK territories. We will go ahead and file to register EDGY in the US and you should go ahead and change the name of your game to EDGY for these territories."
