Makers of Candy Crush Saga suing other games that use the word ‘saga’

King.com, the makers of Candy Crush Saga, has taken legal action to protect its intellectual properties by attempting to trademarking the word “candy” and suing game developers that use the word “saga.”

I understand that you need to protect what is yours, and if other game developers are stealing your ideas, then by all means go after the scumbags. But words like ‘candy’ and ‘saga’ have been in game titles well before the Bejeweled clone was developed, let alone popular.

In King.com’s defense, the company does have 13 games with the word ‘saga’ in the title, and ‘candy’ is the centerpiece of its most popular game. However, stopping other developers from using these common words is just ridiculous. Yes, if a company came out with a puzzle game called Candy Smash Saga, then King.com has every right to go at them. But when it sues developer Stoic for using the word ‘saga’ in the upcoming RPG The Banner Saga – which is exactly what it’s doing right now – King.com just comes off as a jerk.

King.com had this to say when speaking to a representative from Kotaku:

“We do not have any concerns that Banner Saga is trying build on our brand or our content. However, like any prudent company, we need to take all appropriate steps to protect our IP, both now and in the future.

In this case, that means preserving our ability to enforce our rights in cases where other developers may try to use the Saga mark in a way which infringes our IP rights and causes player confusion. If we had not opposed Banner Saga’s trade mark application, it would be much easier for real copycats to argue that their use of “Saga” was legitimate.“

In other words, King.com is making an example of Banner Saga. It wants to scare away any other use of the word “saga” from any future games.

The problem is that the word “saga” is not a unique word that was popularized by Candy Crush Saga. It is simply a word used to describe a long and heroic story, and according to Google’s very cool Ngram viewer it has been in use since at least the 1500s! Games like Banner Saga should have every right to use this common word if that is what best fits.

King.com needs to understand that you can’t just sue because there are games whose names share words with yours.

Or maybe you can. I’m not a lawyer.