Fast forward to today and we have another similar situation with another super popular brand. King.com Ltd, creators of Candy Crush Saga, filed a trademark a year ago for the use of the word “Candy” in games and apparel and it was recently granted. Now they’re on a mission to remove apps of a similar nature from app stores.
Candy Crush Saga is one of the world’s most popular mobile and social games and now its developers, who are making millions upon millions from the free-to-play game thanks to its addictive nature, own rights to the word “Candy.” Apple has helped them taked own what could be described as copycat apps. The problem is that “candy” is a common, normal word. Does this open the door to Angry Birds owning “birds” or a popular Tower Defense game owning the word “tower”? It’s a dangerous precedent and a rep from King sent the following statement to Forbes about one of the titles they had removed:
Protecting an app is fine, but the company arguably shouldn’t be able to own a word like “Candy” especially when the game itself is a clone of the popular Bejeweled - a clone with over half a billion downloads. The name is more important than the original content? Yeap.
The particular App in this instance was called ‘Candy Casino Slots — Jewels Craze Connect: Big Blast Mania Land’, but its icon in the App store just says ‘Candy Slots’, focusing heavily on our trademark. As well as infringing our and other developer’s IP, use of keywords like this as an App name is also a clear breach of Apple’s terms of use. We believe this App name was a calculated attempt to use other companies’ IP to enhance its own games, through means such as search rankings."
[Update: Yes, King is out of control. They’ve literally gone after The Banner Saga because of the word “Saga.” Read about it here.]
Judging by the responses from media and forum users, King is on their way to becoming the next Zynga when it comes to public perception.
Follow Rob on Twitter @rob_keyes.
Source: Forbes
