Trademark is an IP.



If you Trademark "Something X" as the Mark of your asteroid mining company, and nobody else had ever called their asteroid mining business "Something X" before you, it's the legitimate and lawful Trademark (or shingle) of your business. Nobody had done it before you, so it's your IP. From now on, no-one has the right to call their asteroid mining business "Something X", because you thought of that name first as an asteroid mining company name. And if someone then does try to use "Something X" as their 'roid miner co name, then they failed to do their research.



If you registered a Mark before someone else used the same Mark in the same business, you have a legitimate issue.



In the case of Trademark, it's not about "inventing a word" - it's about using a word as a "Mark" for a certain kind of business in a certain area.



IBM didn't invent the words "International", "Business" or "Machines", but they have legitimately registered the Trademark for "International Business Machines" for use in the computer business.



This is IP law 101.

Does that let them threaten people who make say... International Business Modules? They also happen to be in the computer business.

Like you said, the guy legitimately registered the Trademark for "Doodle Jump". That can't stop me from making "Doodle Fuck".



Nor, like Ryan said, could Activision sue someone that makes a shooter called "Call of Something" or "Something of Duty".



The law is meant to protect him from someone using "Doodle Jump", not "Doodle", which is a common word. Or "Jump". Or "Edge".



"This is IP law 101". -_-

Well I don't know.



The owner of Doodle might feel that the guy who made Doodle Jump might be trying to piggy-back his hard work, and that the audience might confuse the two products.



So I think he could possibly have a legitimate concern. And we need to take said concerns seriously.

Let me rephrase this to you:



THERE IS NO OWNER OF "DOODLE".



And his "legitimate concern" is against over 700 titles, some of which were there before his own game was.

And that's well and good if they were trying to block other games called 'Doodle Jump'. I take issue with the fact that they are attempting to block the use of a common word contained within their trademark.



Twisting your example a little bit, it'd be like Something X attempting to block all other mining companies from using the word Something. It makes a lot of sense that they can't be called Something X, but saying they can't use the word Something sounds unreasonable to me. Especially if Something were replaced with a mining related descriptor (Doodle is used in many names to assist in describing the art style).



I'm not sure if you know about the whole Edge fiasco with Tim Langdell, but I feel that Doddle is within the same common use realm as the word edge.

You might feel differently if you put thousands of hours of work into a game called "Bozo Battles", and then it becomes a hit, but someone else makes a cheap knockoff game called "Bozo Wars", exploiting your hard-earned success.

But, if I made a more polished version of the already existing 'Bozo Wars', and was dumb enough to call it "Bozo Battles', then I shouldn't have a leg to stand on in trying to get 'Bozo Wars' to rename their app...

Tim, it's just business. Do you think Coca Cola has a cry when JC Cola brings out a "clone". Sorry to say, but gaming wanted to be mass market and now it is, along with everything that goes along with that. If your game (not your game personally) can't stand on it's own legs against competition than that's just bad luck.



Add to that, in this case it's pretty clear that it's not a "maxsplosion" style ripoff.

You beat me to it. It's the exact same argument that Mr. Carter is trying to make up there.

It's not MY argument.



It's Trademark. It's law



If you are in the game industry, and you're against IP ownership, what are you doing? It's like a guy who wants to get into the real estate business but feels that real estate can't be owned. IP is your stock-in-trade in the game biz.



Now this said, sometimes Trademark gets abused. But taking a position of raw ignorance is a little indefensible.

Like the Edge case is law? Like this Doodle case is law? The Edge guy got crushed in court, and I bet this Doodle thing will also go nowhere.



And where the HELL did you read that anyone on this discussion is "against IP ownership"? You are really a hard person to try and have a discussion with, frequently taking a position of raw dumb (very indefensible).

To be fair, the Edge case was different: Tim did actually own the "Edge" trademark but lost because a) he couldn't prove that he was actively using the trademark for anything other than suing people and b) he allegedly doctored evidence to prove the strength of the trademark.



(something to ponder: EA now owns the Edge trademark. Be interesting to see if they try to sue anyone in the future...)



Lima Sky is actively using their trademark, but as far as I can see, this *doesn't* give them the right to sue people for using the individual words which make up that trademark. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a hard set of "trademark protection" rules: instead, trademark/copyright disputes seem to be settled on a per-case basis, mostly based on the perceived popularity of the IP in question. As such, it's possible for bigger companies to win against smaller companies, for the simple reason that the smaller companies don't have the financial resources to defend themselves.

I'll fully agree that controlling your IP is key to profitability in the games industry, but this sort of "trademark" defence sets a very, very bad precedent.



This is similar to the Edge case, where Tim Langdell tried to sue several companies, including Namco, Sony and EA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_Games



Fortunately, sanity prevailed there, but EA has deep legal pockets: how many small developers would have the resources to battle this sort of trolling?



Also, as Mark noted above, Lima Sky owns the trademark "Doodle Jump". They don't own a trademark called "Doodle", nor do they have a trademark called "Jump". They therefore shouldn't be trying to sue people for using "Doodle" - though funnily enough, they don't seem to be trying to go for people using the word "Jump"...



All told, my personal take on this is that Lima Sky is attempting to abuse their trademark. It's easy to feel a bit of sympathy for a small company (even one which has sold millions of games), but take a step back and look at the general case. If individual words (i.e. not names) can be trademarked, then every company in the world would scramble to get their own unique list, which would in turn block everyone else from using those words.



How would you feel if Nintendo tried to restrict use of the word "Super", or Sega blocked all games which use the word "Sonic"?



Finally, it's worth nothing that the infamously ligatious movie industry has the same problem with clashing movie titles/stories - apart from anything else, there's over a century of prior IP.



However, they *haven't* tried to change the law (titles can't be copyrighted) and unless there appears to be significant evidence of plagarism, they generally ignore the conflicts:

http://www.lawlawlandblog.com/2010/11/reuse_and_confuse_the_recyclin. html



And even then, to achieve a trademark, they generally have to either produce a series (e.g. Scream) *or* they have to prove that the public overwhelmingly identifies their IP as being associated with the given title. (e.g. everyone thinks of robots when you mention The Terminator; but film titles such as Dark Skies are more ambiguous).



(Similarly, the Tetris company owns the Tetris trademark and goes after anyone who uses the word "tetris" to describe their game - however, they don't go after people who make a game which uses Tetris-like principles).

Thanks for the excellent write-up. Way better than Mr. "Law-101" over there.

You want to fight Trademark?



What next? Are you going to fight Copyright? And then Patent?



And when you've ripped these edifices down, what will you then sell? IP will no longer be protectable. You won't be able to own your own work.

Are you going to fight logic and good sense?



What next? I just concluded (because of reasons) that now you are fighting babies!



How can you be against babies? You monster!



What next? Are you going to be against chocolate?

@Tim Carter



One thing is the "Doodle Jump" trademark. It's ok claim the ownership of the "Doodle Jump" trademark, another thing is the claim to be the owner of the "Doodle" word, and sue all developers that wants to use the word in the title of the game, this is the lamiest thing we can expect from a developer, and as members of the game development eco system we need to troll this kind of developer, because trademark trolls are the worst kind of developers.



"Doodle Monster" and "Doodle Hockey" isn't equals "Doodle Jump". If it is ok the developers think they can troll others developers this way I think we has the right to troll them and we need to use this right, we can write bad reviews on youtube, forums, blogs, also we can suggest other games every Doodle Jump topic, video and good review ( PapiJump, Abduction! ). Hurting this kind of developer in the pocket as hard as we can is the best response for this behavior.



I suggest all the owners of games with "Doodle" in the title starting doing this, let's rock this lamer! It's the good sense law. They act with the "law" excuse, and we use the "good sense" excuse, deal made.

I eat chocolate babies.

If you don't think that it is acceptable that Star Trek sues Star Wars for making a sci-fi work with the word "Star", than Tim Carter will say you hate justice!