Candy Crush Cracking Down on Knock Offs
King, the makers of Candy Crush Saga, have recently trademarked the name of its widely popular, breakthrough title, in order to crackdown on the number of knockoffs that have started to flood the market. As a result, completely unrelated games are starting to deal with the blowback of King's licensing, just because the titles contain one of the three words that make up the name "Candy Crush Saga."
Kotaku reported King does not own trademarks to the individual words of "candy" or "saga," but has applied for them. There has been quite a hefty amount of disapproval among the masses in response to King trying to gain control of such widely used terms. King explains it's simply trying to protect its content and diminish would-be pirates from trying to make revenue off the Candy Crush name. Besides its namesake, there are barely any similarities between the candy-based puzzler and Stoic's tactical role-playing game, The Banner Saga.
There have been similar arguments in the past, such as Bethesda seeking legal ramifications against Minecraft's developers due a role-playing game named "Scrolls," which they believe infringed on the Elder Scrolls line. We can't wait to see just how many words will become trademarked in the future, where symbols will have to be used in order to designate the names of video games. Still, we'll be monitoring this King saga to see just which company comes out on top, and if the word candy can possibly be trademarked.