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CandySwipe Open Letter to King regarding trademark
- ToastyMallows 13y agoOuch. I had no idea CandySwipe even existed. This doesn't look good for King.com at all, especially after they were accused of copying Scamperghost[0]. [0]: http://junkyardsam.com/kingcopied/ http://junkyardsam.com/kingcopied/
- shdon 13y agoHonestly, Candy Crush and CandySwipe, while both using the candy theme, are rather different in terms of gameplay. Unlike the Scamperghost case, it is certainly not the case that Candy Crush is a copy of CandySwipe or even derivative. Candy Crush is the better game at least in terms of polish and long-term playability. I won't deny King's douchiness in the trademark case, which will no doubt hurt Mr. Ransom and Runsome Games, but this is not like the Scamperghost case (and nowhere does Mr. Ransom imply that it is -- he's just calling out King on its evil scheme of attempting to quash a pre-existing trademark).
- JangoSteve 13y agoTrue, but gameplay was never really the issue in terms of trademarking "Candy" (and "Saga" or whatever else). The interesting thing is that, in order to defend a trademark, you have to prove that there is potential for confusion. Here we have someone who supposedly had a confusingly-similar trademark before Candy Crush showing actual user confusion (i.e. no need to argue potential if you can show it's already happening).
- shdon 13y agoThe douchiness of King's move is not in question. I'm just pointing out that, apart from generally being similarly evil, it's not at all related to the Scamperghost thing. We should be angry at King for two different ways in which they are evil, not two counts of the same thing. If anything, this makes them worse.
- fargolime 13y agoKing apparently bought an earlier (than CandySwipe) trademark they are now using against CandySwipe. They may well get away with it, especially since CandySwipe can't defend itself.
- kzahel 13y agoThat's pretty dirty. If you have no legitimate claim to a trademark, just buy an existing slightly related trademark and use that!
- loceng 13y agoI am surprised that this would pass in court as being a legitimate means of existing.
- hitiek 13y agoIt doesn't have to pass in court as long as you have more money than your opponent. You just keep going until they run out of money.
- adam-f 13y agoIt seems to me that the anti-SLAPP laws apply in spirit here (of restricting overbearing litigation.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publi...
- nness 13y agoIt might be, but sadly and more realistically, the costs of a completely fair and honest dispute would still be incredibly inhibiting.
- wpietri 13y agoYes. Long ago I asked my first business lawyer something like, "Could we be sued for that?" His answer was something like: "Sure. You can be sued for almost anything. They probably can't win in the long run, but that isn't the important question. It's whether you are willing to pay to fight it to the end."
- relaunched 13y agoThere is a constant struggle between doing what's right for your business and doing the right thing. Until you are placed in that position, you really have no idea what you'll do. I hope this post brings about enough social pressure to ensure that the right thing, whatever that means, happens.
- michaelbuddy 13y agoYou have no idea what you'll do but among the social pressure the right decsions should have been pretty obvious by now. F-- candy krus h
- iluvuspartacus 13y agoSeriously, why isn't this guy able to win this and gain monetary damages?
- TheSwordsman 13y agoI'm guessing the cost of actually doing this is more than he has. And even if he wins, I'm sure King.com will spend months or years trying to appeal the ruling which will cost him more money.
- VikingCoder 13y ago...is this the kind of battle the EFF fights?
- ChuckMcM 13y agoWell if the case is strong enough, the US at least you don't need money, you tell the lawyers they can keep the the money all you want is to establish your right to the trademark. Then they go off and bring this guy down, make their money, and you get the satisfaction of knowing that your trademark is safe.
- VikingCoder 13y ago...unless the law is clear, and he's destined to lose. Then no lawyer will touch it on the terms you describe.
- Smegger 13y agoreally it sound exactly like the terms of the sco vs linux lawsuits
- fnordfnordfnord 13y agoSomebody ought to make a law that would protect people against things like that. /s
- werdnapk 13y agoKing is no different than Zynga. The best formula for making it in the appstore is to copy other peoples work. This has been apparent for quite some time now.
- stevenj 13y agoSomewhat related and something I've thought about over the years: "Here's a model that we've had trouble with. Maybe you'll be able to figure it out better. Many markets get down to two or three big competitors—or five or six. And in some of those markets, nobody makes any money to speak of. But in others, everybody does very well. Over the years, we've tried to figure out why the competition in some markets gets sort of rational from the investor's point of view so that the shareholders do well, and in other markets, there's destructive competition that destroys shareholder wealth. If it's a pure commodity like airline seats, you can understand why no one makes any money. As we sit here, just think of what airlines have given to the world—safe travel, greater experience, time with your loved ones, you name it. Yet, the net amount of money that's been made by the shareholders of airlines since Kitty Hawk, is now a negative figure—a substantial negative figure. Competition was so intense that, once it was unleashed by deregulation, it ravaged shareholder wealth in the airline business. Yet, in other fields—like cereals, for example—almost all the big boys make out. If you're some kind of a medium grade cereal maker, you might make 15% on your capital. And if you're really good, you might make 40%. But why are cereals so profitable—despite the fact that it looks to me like they're competing like crazy with promotions, coupons and everything else? I don't fully understand it. Obviously, there's a brand identity factor in cereals that doesn't exist in airlines. That must be the main factor that accounts for it. And maybe the cereal makers by and large have learned to be less crazy about fighting for market share—because if you get even one person who's hell-bent on gaining market share.... For example, if I were Kellogg and I decided that I had to have 60% of the market, I think I could take most of the profit out of cereals. I'd ruin Kellogg in the process. But I think I could do it. In some businesses, the participants behave like a demented Kellogg. In other businesses, they don't. Unfortunately, I do not have a perfect model for predicting how that's going to happen. For example, if you look around at bottler markets, you'll find many markets where bottlers of Pepsi and Coke both make a lot of money and many others where they destroy most of the profitability of the two franchises. That must get down to the peculiarities of individual adjustment to market capitalism. I think you'd have to know the people involved to fully understand what was happening." -Charlie Munger http://ycombinator.com/munger.html http://ycombinator.com/munger.html
- ToastyMallows 13y ago
- mixologic 13y agoA corporate legal team stealing intellectual property and trademarks from smaller entities is more american than apple pie and baseball.
- ale7714 13y agoThis is so sad and unfair
- incision 13y ago>"You are able to do this because only within the last month you purchased the rights to a game named Candy Crusher (which is nothing like CandySwipe or even Candy Crush Saga)." How does this work? Can one buy a trademark in order to pre-empt someone else's trademark which pre-empts another of your own?
- mongol 13y agoI guess that buying the intellectual property rights to the game, they can say to the trademark office - look here, proof or presence in the gaming market under this name since 200X, therefore we should have the the trademark and the exclusive right to name things candy.
- kaa2102 13y agoIt is a travesty that trademark trolls are enriching themselves based on the hard work and creativity of others. I hope that Runsom Apps prevails.
- jason_slack 13y agoso, is that all these big game companies do, just copy? Seems that King and Zynga have been called out a few times recently. So are they hoping that they can clone a game just enough and hope people buy it because of their name versus some indie dev you may not have heard of?
- Blackavar 13y agoThat's pretty much the business model. Copy ideas and execute faster than the original developers because they have more resources.
- jasonlotito 13y ago> so, is that all these big game companies do, just copy? Well, don't just limit it to big companies. Small companies, even startups just copy away. And it's not just games, but apps in general.
- jason_slack 13y agoI dont think I see it as often in other apps. Look at the hype around Flappy Bird clones right now.
- loceng 13y agoWas this posted to Reddit yet?
- ChuckMcM 13y agoIt would be interesting if Apple would step in here. They could, given their obscenely vague appstore "rules", simply delete the CandyCrush Saga game out of the store as it is a copy of an existing game. That would force King to be a bit more creative in their copying in the future. That said, "protecting" games has been a problem, almost literally forever. On the one hand you want folks to benefit from there work, on the other hand sometimes a 'derivative' is a much much better game. So do you cut off that like we've done with software patents? Or not?
- werdnapk 13y agoI'm the author of a popular app that has been copied by many many other developers. Despite many complaints to try and limit the copy-cats, Apple does nothing and leaves the issue up to the developers to sort out between themselves for the most part and it's absolutely frustrating. Watching an app be successful and then watching the copy-cats swoop in to feed on your success as Apple (or Google) do nothing is very difficult to deal with.
- ebbv 13y agoWelcome to capitalism. If you were a web app, or a brick and mortar store, there would be no Apple or Google for you to appeal to. Only the courts, which you have anyway, but which have no sway over developers in China, etc. Honestly I can't believe you (and other) developers are surprised when this happens. My company's web site was copy and pasted wholesale by a competitor, and we had to threaten legal action against them in order to get them to replace it. (Probably with someone else's.)
- wpietri 13y agoThe claim for the Apple marketplace was that it would be a better place, a well-tended garden. Better for consumers, better for vendors, and worth Apple taking a large slice of profits. So I think it's reasonable that developers are surprised.
- 13y ago
- lazyeye 13y agoPerhaps a legal defense could be funded through something like KickStarter?
- izzydata 13y agoDamn copyright trolls. It's a shame this can't be more known.
- mkr-hn 13y agoIt's spreading quickly in the gamedev/writer community on Twitter.
- troymc 13y agoIt seems to me that making games for the iTunes App Store has become a "red ocean strategy." It's fiercely competitive, and there are now some monster sharks (e.g. King, Zynga). I don't like the sharks, but hey, they're sharks: they're doing what sharks do. Time to look for some blue ocean, I guess.
- wpietri 13y agoSharks are doing what sharks do: they don't have a choice. People acting like sharks? They can choose other paths. I get that they're responding to the incentives. Which is also fucked up. But I can hate the player and the game.
- dublinben 13y agoIt's very risky for your business to depend entirely on the closed platform of another business. It really shouldn't be surprising that 'sharks' are ripping off smaller developers in these marketplaces. They've proven to be better adapted to the rules of the game.
- NinjaWarrior 13y agoYou imply the web is the blue ocean? :) I've experienced countless hotlinkings, rippings, clones, insults, DoS attacks and cybersquattings as a former Flash game developer. Luckily, I have not been involved in any trademark issues, but it is happening also on the web, isn't it?
- troymc 13y agoI didn't imply anything about the web. I was just referencing the ideas in this book (with which I have no affiliation): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ocean_Strategy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ocean_Strategy
- sheff 13y agoThis sort of thing is happening increasingly frequently. I really like the idea of AskPatents ( http://patents.stackexchange.com http://patents.stackexchange.com ). It seems to me that as developers we need a similar site where people can start objecting to overly broad trademarks, especially single word ones which are targeted at web service and application name related trademark classes. There are probably much fewer trademarks issued that patents, and they are easily searchable online, eg the UK Trademark Journal is at http://www.ipo.gov.uk/t-tmj/tm-journals/2014-006/index.html http://www.ipo.gov.uk/t-tmj/tm-journals/2014-006/index.html . A trademark is also much easier to object to than a patent ( http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/tm/t-other/t-object/t-afterpub/t-oppose/t-oppose-apply.htm http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/tm/t-other/t-object/t-afterpub/t... ). It would be a great weekend project for someone to create a web app which does some of this. You could even charge businesses a fee to monitor words that may affect their businesses.
- kumarski 13y agoHey dude, That sucks. As a favor, I went ahead and gave them a shit review. If I had more time, I might link farm their brand name all over the place.
- blhack 13y agoWow they are not kidding about the ripoff... Even the "wildcard" game piece is almost identical.
- Dalai_Llama 13y agoThe day King goes down the drain many will dance upon its grave, and other indie devs will take turns to pee on it. May swift karmic justice fall upon them soon.