In late January of this year, one of the leading interactive mobile entertainment companies in the world published an open letter on its website, addressing the debate that has been brewing about its intellectual property protection practices. In this press release, King’s cofounder and CEO, Riccardo Zacconi, discussed his company’s belief that developers “have every right to protect the hard work they do and the games they create,” and pledged that King would continue to take “right and reasonable” action to defend themselves against those they believe are ripping off their IP. One of the company’s most valuable assets is their immensely popular “Candy Crush Saga.” Though the game itself is free to download and play, with millions of people playing it on their mobile devices every day, the virtual items available for purchase within the game reportedly helped the company earn over $450 million in revenue in last year’s December quarter. Those figures are pretty remarkable, especially considering that the game launched less than two years ago. An independent developer named Albert Ransom, however, is not impressed. Two years before Candy Crush Saga entered the marketplace, Ransom’s company, Runsome Apps, released a mobile game entitled “CandySwipe” in memory of his late mother. According to Ransom, King’s flagship game is causing much consumer confusion and significant harm to his business. Though many others have made the accusation, Ransom stops short of calling Candy Crush Saga a blatant copy of his work, for which he filed for trademark in 2010. After King tried to register the Candy Crush Saga mark two years later, Ransom opposed their application and had been fighting it since. King retaliated this February by adding a counterclaim for cancellation of Runsome’s CandySwipe trademark registration. Their case was further strengthened by the fact that, earlier that month, they had officially acquired the rights to the “Candy Crusher,” a game that predated Runsome’s CandySwipe by two years. As it takes five years of commercial use before the USPTO will consider a term “incontestable,” King’s ownership of the Candy Crusher mark—which was established in 2008—essentially outweighs their need to continue pursuing their US application for the “Candy” trademark, which Runsome had been opposing. (King has no plans of abandoning their trademark of the term in the EU, however.) Now that it has legal claim to the precedential Candy Crusher title, King can use it as ammunition in any future cases against companies trying to capitalize on a candy-related mark.
In his own open letter to King in response to this latest development, Ransom begrudgingly concedes defeat, saying “you win…I hope you’re happy taking the food out of my family’s mouth… your move to buy a trademark for the sole purpose of getting away with infringing on the CandySwipe trademark and goodwill just sickens me.” (The original letter has since been taken down, leaving only a message thanking the public for their outpouring of support.) Even the International Game Developers Association has issued a statement qualifying King’s recent conduct as “overreaching,” “predatory,” and contradictory to Zacconi’s own January statement, and vows to look into the matter more comprehensively. Presumably, the folks at King are hoping that they can put all of these concerns to rest before their IPO, which is expected to debut later this year. However, the disputes above—together with a separate case that they’ve brought against another developer over its use of the word “saga”—have been garnering the mobile entertainment giant a lot of bad press, particularly amongst the extremely vocal gaming community. Social media channels and comment sections on articles about the ongoing trademark clashes have been flooded with people saying that they are uninstalling the Candy Crush game and pledging never to buy a King app again. This does not bode well for King’s investment prospects if they are drawing the ire of the very demographic they claim to serve.
In his own open letter to King in response to this latest development, Ransom begrudgingly concedes defeat, saying “you win…I hope you’re happy taking the food out of my family’s mouth… your move to buy a trademark for the sole purpose of getting away with infringing on the CandySwipe trademark and goodwill just sickens me.” (The original letter has since been taken down, leaving only a message thanking the public for their outpouring of support.) Even the International Game Developers Association has issued a statement qualifying King’s recent conduct as “overreaching,” “predatory,” and contradictory to Zacconi’s own January statement, and vows to look into the matter more comprehensively. Presumably, the folks at King are hoping that they can put all of these concerns to rest before their IPO, which is expected to debut later this year. However, the disputes above—together with a separate case that they’ve brought against another developer over its use of the word “saga”—have been garnering the mobile entertainment giant a lot of bad press, particularly amongst the extremely vocal gaming community. Social media channels and comment sections on articles about the ongoing trademark clashes have been flooded with people saying that they are uninstalling the Candy Crush game and pledging never to buy a King app again. This does not bode well for King’s investment prospects if they are drawing the ire of the very demographic they claim to serve.