Mixed up the apps a bit, there is a strong accusation of Candy Crush being a clone of another game named Candy Swipe. In that case they are trying strong arm the guy out of the way despite his strong claims. Just yet more crappy behavior from a modern day bully.
Try downloading Candy Swipe. Yeah it came first, but the game isn't nearly as good - the graphics are stagnant, the objectives are unclear, and the game itself is just boring. Not to mention both games are just derivatives of a thousand other tile matching games that have existed since the NES days.
Game mechanics are not trademarkable, and its a huge benefit for the entire industry. Studios steal from eachother and make incremental improvements, which means a lot more variety in genres, more choices for consumers, and a greater commitment to quality. Still, big studios try to weasel their way into exclusivity through trademarks.
I say don't hate on King.com for their past actions, reprimand them for trying to change the rules of the game once they reached the top of the hill.
As I have not played either game, I was not commenting on the game mechanics. I was referring to the fact that two similar games may not necessarily be allowed to have similar names if one were trademarked, which is the mostly the focus of the guy's complaint. Considering King's reaction to his complaint, I would say that King actually supports his claim but are using a clever method to get around it to use his own claim against him.
I agree that there's not much to be done, and should not be done, about copying a game's mechanics and attempting to improve upon them. But part of the accusations are cloning art assets which can have consequences up to a certain point. I think a combination of cloning art assets in accordance with their respective game mechanics should be an issue in this case, whether the law supports this notion I have no idea.
It's not a copy of Candy Swipe, though. The Candy Swipe creator has been painting a really bad picture of King, but if you actually download and play both apps, you'll see they're completely different games. Even the supposed copying of the graphics and colors that the Candy Swipe dev blogged about didn't really happen. Each app uses the primary colors. That's it.
Keep in mind that King purchased an app created before this guy's was released and responded using his own complaint against him. It would seem that gives some credence to the guy's original complaint.
Candy crush is a match-3 game like bejeweled, while candyswipe is a "draw an unbroken path on similar things" game. The game play is a different mechanism. Though the graphical and stylistic similarities are there, I'd hardly call it a clone.
(not that I'm defending King in their douchebag tactics)
Exactly. The Candyswipe dev has been pretty successful at promoting his story. But in reality, the games (1) have nearly nothing in common, and (2) are both highlyu derivative of other, older games.
- The creator does exactly the same thing than most people accused King.com of doing: Ie. blocking someone's trademark application because they both have the same word in it (here "Candy").
- They both have a blue "circle" as an icon (I'm sorry, but the others one have nothing in common except they are all candies, somehow)
- The games have very little in common mechanically. CandySwipe is about selecting multiple adjacent candies while Candy Crush is about permuting multiple candies so you can make combos.
Because, yes, these games have really nothing in common, except they are about candies. If anything, the only one who could have something of a claim is Bejeweled's creator, Pop-Cap.
If anything, Albert Ransom (who got quite the name here), only got what he was asking for when King bought Candy Crusher and so had a legitimate response, since Candy Crusher is older than CandySwipe.
King.com is certainly not a saint, but Ransom is just freeriding here because he got a good story.
It feels weird replying like this to someone in the UK(according to your profile), but...
Since the original story broke I've been thinking that I would have granted the Candy trademark, but perhaps I'm being too short sighted.
To my British ear candy isn't a common word at all. I say this understanding that the word is common in American English(candy store, candy bar, etc).
The only candy usage examples I can think of are the non-hyphenated Candyfloss(Cotton Candy to Americans), and the even weaker related use as a process as in "candied fruit".
Please point out that I'm wrong. It has been niggling me for a couple of weeks now, and I suspect I must just be looking at this the wrong way.
Edit: Remembered Candyfloss → Cotton Candy the moment I hit send.
Candy is indeed uncommon here, but not unheard of. You'll find it on confectionary packaging to describe the contents. There's also a chain of stores in London (elsewhere now?) called Cyber Candy that sell exotic (OK so mostly american) candy.
So it is in some use, but not that common.
Personally I object to anyone that tries to trademark a single word of our shared language. They shouldn't be able to fence bits off like that, they should have to make up their own word if they want it trademarked.
Good example for me with Cyber Candy, I've walked by one countless times but didn't think of it.
I'll make a U-turn here and say that I agree with you about using made up words, but for a different reason. I'd probably rather see random non-word brands like PreBarpTzoh, than keep having to remember region specific names for trademark reasons. Lynx/Axe is the example that immediately springs to mind, a future Candy Mush Tiger and <insert non-EU name> could be another.
>To my British ear candy isn't a common word at all. //
It's pretty common but not to refer to hard boiled or jelly sweets. It has been co-opted, by analogy with sweets, to refer to a particular colour palette - as such is often used when referencing that (eg in cosmetics); you'll probably recall the candy-coloured iMacs.
It's not however commonality in general parlance that is the relevant measure - candy is and has been used in video games for a while to refer to brightly coloured shapes. King's use (since 2012) isn't original and so isn't distinctive enough to indicate the origin of computing products [and others in the relevant TM classification areas] bearing the title "Candy" is King.com, Ltd..
If it were on commonality in street parlance then candy would be pretty common among younger generations that are more influenced by USA culture.
Saga? They might as well apply for "game" as an RTM.
This is one of the points where British English and American English diverge. Candy in the US is the generic word with the identical meaning as what in the UK is just called "sweets". Same thing as trousers / pants, although not quite as amusing.
Did they actually win that? The USPTO shows an active trademark record for The Banner Saga and I couldn't find a generic "saga" mark for King.com, but I don't really know enough about the system to be sure of what I'm seeing.
They abandoned it in the US because they purchased the rights to the "Candy Crusher" trademark — a game which came out before Candy Swipe and protects King against trademark attacks from that front. They are still pursuing "Candy" in the EU.
I don't understand why people got so mad at King for this. People complained at all the Flappy Bird clones. That is exactly why King was trying to protect the candy trademark. King was just doing that the law requires them to do in order to protect their trademark and prevent thousands of clones trying to cash in on the candy trademark.
Trademark isn't about people making clones of your game. In this case Trademark is about people confusing the title of your game with another game because they use the same name.
Trademarking "Candy Crush Saga" makes sense because that's the full name of the game and is not a common word or phrase.
Trademarking "Candy" is absurd. This means any game that has the world candy in it is suddenly subject to litigation by King. Candy is a common word, and I could have a game called Unicorn Candy Attack and clearly that's not going to cause confusion with Candy Crush Saga.
Who is complaining about the Flappy Bird clones? If the creator hadn't pulled the app, he still would have been printing out money for the foreseeable future, so I doubt he's enraged about people profiting from the idea. Out of those thousands of clones, the new winner won't be the app that carbon copies Flappy Bird most effectively, it's going to be an app that builds on the idea. If King.com, with their newfound millions, can't build a superior product to some poser "Sweets Smash Story", then they don't deserve to stay on top of the App Charts.
As far as I have seen, the only people who have complained about flappy clones have actually just complained that flappy clones are 'trending', not that clones are made. In other words, they are just annoyed by being bombarded by clone after clone.
there's a big difference between cloning the likeness of an entire game vs. having a game that bares no resemblance to another game other than the name of it...
Didn't they try to trademark 'saga' at some point too? Complaining that Viking Saga was a copy of their game? This whole trademark of common English terms is going to ruin the industry
The amount they got paid for this was probably not worth the energy they put into it.
(as a side, i'd love to see engineers account for their time in 5 minute increments before complaining about lawyer billing practices. I would be surprised if it wasn't the case that on a salary / number-of-hours-really-worked-per-year, most IP lawyers make a lot less than most engineers)
It depends on my day and how hard I'm working as to how much I get paid per hour. But then I've never worried too much about guiding wealth, so long as my family is well provided for and happy. Maybe that's why I'm not wealthy :-)
