Candy Crush Trying to Cancel Trademark on a Game That Was Invented First

We know Flappy Bird is the new hotness, but before that, Candy Crush Saga was where it was at. Sure, it’s a rip-off of Bejeweled, but it’s also stepped on the toes of some other already-existing games, too. And Albert Ransom, creator of the 2010 game CandySwipe, wants to set the record straight.

According to Ransom, who explained the situation in a recent open letter on his website that’s addressed to the company, he created CandySwipe in order to create a loving tribute to his deceased mother, who “always liked these sorts of games” — meaning games in which you swipe at chains of connecting objects to score points.

He filed for the trademark back in 2010, and everything was hunky dory until 2012 or so, when King.com attempted to file their own trademark for Candy Crush Saga. Immediately Ransom became concerned, because in addition to have very similar names, Candy Crush saga did this thing where it sort of looks exactly like CandySwipe. Like, right down to the “Sweet!”

So he filed for “likelihood of confusion” against King.com and quietly opposed the game’s trademark for the past year and a half. Now, Ransom reports, King.com is petitioning to have his CandySwipe trademark revoked instead so that they can purchase it for themselves, in the same way that they recently bought a similarly named game called Candy Crusher earlier this month.

This is the last straw, Ransom wrote in his letter:

I have spent over three years working on this game as an independent app developer. I learned how to code on my own after my mother passed and CandySwipe was my first and most successful game; it’s my livelihood, and you are now attempting to take that away from me. You have taken away the possibility of CandySwipe blossoming into what it has the potential of becoming. I have been quiet, not to exploit the situation, hoping that both sides could agree on a peaceful resolution. However, your move to buy a trademark for the sole purpose of getting away with infringing on the CandySwipe trademark and goodwill just sickens me.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a larger app company steal the name or concept of a much smaller app — Facebook’s also had some recent problems with their Paper app, because an app called Paper already existed. King.com, though, is taking it a step farther by trying to buy CandySwipe’s name out from under them. CandySwipe’s not the only company to get targeted, either, as King.com has also gone after The Banner Saga for using the word “saga.” Clearly this is a sign that not only is King.com actually kind of a huge dick of a company, but we need some massive amounts of Intellectual Property reform to ensure this kind of stuff stops happening.

(via Candy Swipe, image via King.com)

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