The matter is still in court after the indie developer has not reached an agreement with the sector giant.
The strict control by trademarks in the industry has brought us many complaints in recent years to prevent their use by third parties, with quite curious news such as when Activision sued a canine waste cleaning service for baptizing itself as Call of doodee. Now, and with the American giant again involved, we know the story of a small indie game, Warzone.
Randy ficker account at The Gamer how the development of this mobile strategy adventure has led him to take on the company led by Bobby Kotick in recent months. The reason? Have signed as Warzone an adventure launched in 2017, about three years before the launch of the Call of Duty battle-royale. “Last year, Activision sued me for having the same name as them, trying to take control of the brand. They want a court to rule that I have no rights to the word ‘Warzone’ and that Activision should have them. As far as I know about trademarks, whoever uses it before has their rights. “
The Gamer puts this information in context and explains how the problems came after the launch of CoD: Warzone and Activision’s interest in registering the trademark. This prompted Ficker to do the same, causing a bitter dispute, already collected on the pages of 3DJuegos in April of this year, which is still ongoing.
During the process, Activision initially put $ 10,000 on the table for Ficker to rename his video game that he rejected by not covering the legal costs and the purchase of new domains. Since then there have been no more offers by the publisher, starting a lawsuit that this developer and his sole proprietorship do not want to face. “Every minute that I spend in this case is one that I don’t work on my game. I don’t like demands, I like to create games“.
The Gamer also picks up on Activision’s contradictions in the case, bidding for exclusive control of the brand while claiming to see inconceivable that anyone could confuse both games. “They are trying to make all the possible arguments they can just to see what the court can give them,” he adds. The case continues, and the last hearing was held on December 10.
Ficker explains how Warzone is a video game he started working on in 2008, in a project that bore the name of WarLight. In 2017 came its continuation, Warzone, and from 2020 all the problems arising from the brand.
More about: Warzone and Tribunals and videogames.
