Rebellion Studios sues Ironclad over name " Rebellion:
polycounter lvl 9
Sniper Elite studio Rebellion Developments filed a lawsuit against Ironclad Games in 2012 over Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, claiming that the title infringed on Rebellion's trademark. A judge dismissed the case more than a year ago, ruling that the title qualifies as "expressive speech" and is thus protected by the First Amendment, and if you're wondering why you didn't hear anything about it until now, it's because Ironclad opted to not to publicize the victory in an effort to "let bygones be bygones." But now Rebellion has launched new legal action against the game in Canada and the U.K., and that's prompted Ironclad to speak up.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/06/30/sins-of-a-solar-empire-studio-speaks-out-against-new-rebellion-legal-action/?ns_campaign=article-feed&ns_mchannel=ref&ns_source=steam&ns_linkname=0&ns_fee=0
Personally i think this is a pretty desperate act by rebellion, firs the key issue now this. You cannot trademark a word from the english language
http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/06/30/sins-of-a-solar-empire-studio-speaks-out-against-new-rebellion-legal-action/?ns_campaign=article-feed&ns_mchannel=ref&ns_source=steam&ns_linkname=0&ns_fee=0
Personally i think this is a pretty desperate act by rebellion, firs the key issue now this. You cannot trademark a word from the english language
Replies
Yes, you can - that's the entire point of a trademark; to trademark a word or expression with respect to your line of business.
Sniper Elite 3 made bank. It may well be Rebellion's best ever selling title (it even squeezed into the Steam best sellers a few days in a row during the sale without being on sale itself).
Either way, the case is just a waste of everyone's time.
You can trademark something of importance, in this case the game is SINS of a Solar Empire , rebellion is only the expansion name.
If you want to get technical there was a star wars game, Star Wars Rebellion, so how can rebellion use that name then ?
but of course there is the guild wars world of Tyria.
if i get sued for this i swear i will literally punch their lawyers in the dick, in a move known as "go big or go home".
You're black? I didn't know that!
As clearly Tyria is the feminine form of Tyrone.
Well, at least in my neighborhood
Rebellion pre-dates that game by several years, but this is beside the point. We all know that the case is frivolous, but that doesn't change the fact that you can trademark an individual word's use within a given context. It's not limited to words either - you can also trademark things like colours.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverherzfeld/2013/02/28/failure-to-enforce-trademarks-if-you-snooze-do-you-lose/
In this case, there is not going to be any consumer confusion between Rebellion (the developer) and Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion (the game), so policing the trademark in this manner realistically amounts to bullying.
The thing here is that you are not required to defend against cases where nothing was ever infringed upon and as the court of law already decided: the first lawsuit was silly.
The funny second layer misunderstanding about this is that with every one of these articles people end up thinking that companies have to sue the shit out of everyone to protect their name.
Most likely someone in the rebellion corporate structure is a lawyer, like at zenimax
I actually bought Sins Rebellion in the summer sale and i love it. 5 hours into a match 2v2v2v2v2 across 72 planets. What more can a rts fan want?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_%28robot%29#Trademark_use
The word droid is a registered trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd.
the word "Droid" is an abbreviation of Android. i'm pretty sure the first is acceptable and the second isn't.
I thought Droid wasn't an actual word before their trademark, though? I know it's a shortened form of android, but it's still their original construction.
If someone had trademarked 'Bellion' or 'Rebellio' or some compound of two different words... then that'd make sense to me, but 'rebellion' is a completely normal, common-use word in our language. Reminds me of the whole 'Edge' debacle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_Games#Trademark_disputes) or King's recent attempt to kill anything with the word 'Candy' in it.
Oh so you have to pay Google for Android.
http://www.google.com/permissions/trademark/our-trademarks.html