Today in breathtakingly stupid trademark disputes - indie developer Black Forest Games has lost a battle to name its ”roguelike coop run’n’gun game” DieselStormers, after a complaint from fashion label Diesel. Who make jeans.
I’m admittedly no expert on trademark law, but this sort of things really gets on my nipples. The Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market apparently decided that a game about people with gas tanks on their backs shooting each other was a serious infringement on the ridiculously wide-ranging trademark of a company that makes denim trousers. I don’t get it.
It’s a blow for Black Forest, which was gearing up to release DieselStormers after a successful Kickstarter campaign midway through last year. Still, the team plans to forge ahead under a new title.
“This decision has caught us with our pants down,” writes managing director Adrian Goersch. ”We are quite surprised that our trademark application has been formally denied. We are no multinational corporation, we cannot fight this decision, even though, frankly, it is a disaster with indie marketing as difficult as it is today. But the history of this game and our company as a whole has been marked with tough challenges and we will manage to overcome this one as well. First of all, we will make sure everyone will be able to keep playing the game, then we’ll come back with a new name.””
