King's CEO addresses all the trademark backlash and cloning allegations in a letter

Published on Monday, 27 January 2014 10:52

Written by Super User

Last week King, the developers of Candy Crush Saga and publisher of numerous browser-based games, made headlines a few times for a few different reasons. First it was about the company trademarking the word 'Candy', then going after another game called The Banner Saga for its use of the word Saga, and then it was about a developer accusing King of publishing a copy of their game.

Now King is back in the news yet again but this time it is over their own doing as the company publicly addresses all of these issues from last week. In regards to the trademark related issues, this is what King CEO Riccardo Zacconi has to say about the matter regarding going after The Banner Saga:

We don't believe that Banner Saga resembles any of our games but we already have a series of games where 'Saga' is key to the brand which our players associate with King. We're not trying to stop Stoic from using the word Saga but we had to oppose their application to preserve our own ability to protect our own games. Otherwise, it would be much easier for future copycats to argue that use of the word 'Saga' when related to games, was fair play. - King CEO Riccardo Zacconi

As for the company's move to trademark the word Candy, Zacconi has this to say:

We are not trying to control the world's use of the word 'Candy'. Having a trade mark doesn't allow us to do that anyway. We're just trying to prevent others from creating games that unfairly capitalise on our success.

Ironically, when it comes to the accusations regarding putting up a clone of Scamperghost called Pac-Avoid, King admits the game should never have been published in the first place.

Details of the situation are complex, but the bottom line is that we should never have published Pac-Avoid. We have taken the game down from our site, and we apologise for having published it in the first place.

In the end it is all about fairness according to the King CEO and that the company will continue to take the steps needed in order to protect their own IPs and published titles.

In a thriving game development community, good game developers - both small and large - have every right to protect the hard work they do and the games they create. [We will continue to take the] appropriate steps to protect our IP, including our look-and-feel and trademarks.

So there should be no problem in using the word Candy in any of your upcoming Android games, at least according to King. For those of you interested, you can read King CEO Riccardo Zacconi's entire letter addressing everything over here on King's official blog. Always fun times to be had in the gaming industry.

Website Referenced: PocketGamer.biz

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from DroidGamers [expanded by feedex.net] http://www.droidgamers.com/index.php/game-news/android-game-news/7216-king-ceo-addresses-all-the-trademark-backlash-and-cloning-allegations-in-a-letter
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