The Web Graffiti: "For those of us who do not know Flappy Bird, it is a side scrolling game made by Dong Nguyen from Vietnam and published by GEARS studio. As the name suggests, the game is about making a bird fly from the left side to right side unharmed as it attempts to fly between columns of green pipe- flapping though. The game was released in May 2013, its popularity saw a spike in early 2014."
TechCrunch: This was bound to happen. A company calling itself “Ultimate Arcade” is attempting to trademark the word “Flappy,” following the fervor around the viral App Store game, “Flappy Bird,” whose disappearance led to the creation of hundreds of clones, parody apps, and other similarly-inspired titles. Of course someone would try to cash in on this craze, but Ultimate Arcade is now not just attempting to gain the trademark for itself – it’s actually going after developers who are using the word “Flappy” in their game’s name, and claiming trademark infringement.
This is where these laws get stupid, luckily these idiots don't have a case.
1 Anything published before the trademark takes place is fine. it states they published a game, but don't have the trademark yet. If anything the people that published their games first can take the trademark themselves as they can showcase dates as to when it was published. i'm sure "flappy" was used before 2006 too, so they'd lose both instances.
2 They can only trademark a game called "flappy" they can't go any further. A subtitle or added word to the title means its a different game. "Flappy Bird" is not "flappy" so it's fine.
3 People are allowed specific rights to parodies, which is what a majority of these are.
And I'm not sure about this one, but you can't trademark or copyright general things. Like you can't copyright the letter "A" and "Flappy" could be too general.
Replies(2)Basicly Ultimate Arcade is going to be paying their lawyers and not getting anything back.
Geek: As part of the madness surrounding the Flappy Bird craze in recent weeks, one engineer created a version of the game that could never be removed from an app store. It was called Flappy Bird in a Box, and recreated the original game in physical form. Now the creator, Fawn Qiu, is taking her creation a step further and turning it into a learning aid through Kickstarter.
Gamespesso writes: If you thought you’d seen the last of Flappy Bird, you thought wrong. Well, sort of.
After Flappy Bird disappeared from app stores around the world, other like-minded games flooded the bird-shaped void their predecessor left in an attempt to – you guessed it – cash in on creator Dong Nguyen’s immense success.
