Futuremark Gives Lame Excuse for Trying to Trademark “Pwnage”
By Jonathan on Tuesday, March 4th, 2008 at 2:46 PM PST In Game Companies, Game Related Laws, Gamer Life, Games Industry
You may recall a little ridiculous piece of news not too long ago that involved Finnish software developer, Futuremark, trying to trademark the word “pwnage.” Well, now the company has come forth to explain their reasons for wanting to hold the rights to the term. Their explanation is, well, lame:
Fellow gamers,
Our purpose in filing for trademark on the name “Pwnage” is not to charge money or stop people from using the expression. That’s not what a trademark is for. Instead, we want to protect ourselves from squatters (or what I call campers) – people looking to trademark the name on false pretenses, just to make a claim against Futuremark Games Studio for its use.
Jukka Mäkinen, Executive Producer, Futuremark Games Studio
Oh, so they just want to trademark the name so nobody else can trademark it. That makes sense if they created the term and had some significant ties to it. What’s that, you say? The word “pwnage” has nothing to do with Futuremark, so it’s ridiculous for them to try and stop anyone else from using the term in any form of media? Well then…touche.
Via YouGamers
Maybe they are making a game or program with “pwnage”.
There are many companies that trademark words/stuff when they see some company is it and then they charge money for it, so that “lame excuse” as you called it seems pretty reasonable to me. It has nothing to do with creating words/terms.
As long as this company actually makes a game called “Pwnage” I do not have a problem with the trademark. If they are trademarking “Pwnage” just so some other comapny can’t create a game with that title without paying this comapnay money then that is not right.
“# ManOfTeal says:
March 4th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
As long as this company actually makes a game called “Pwnage” I do not have a problem with the trademark. If they are trademarking “Pwnage” just so some other comapny can’t create a game with that title without paying this comapnay money then that is not right.
”
Yeah, if they tried to prevent other companies from making games with “pwnage” and charged money for it, it would be lame and wrong. But I really don’t understand why they would do something like that. I think that they are preventing others from doing that to them.
OFFTOPIC
Isn’t Futuremark mostly owned by Remedy, the makers of Max Payne (1 and 2), Death Rally and Alan Wake?
Or at least used to be so…
Personally, I will never buy a game with pwnage in, around, or anywhere near the title. It’s bad enough that I have to listen to people say “pownage”, but that a game developer would think that including that in the game title is a good idea tells me they’re pandering to an audience I hope I’m not part of.
I do not understand how anyone can have a problem with this. Amazon didnt invent the word Amazon but they trademarked it so no one else can use it to sell stuff online. there is absolutely no difference.
@Norbit: one problem in particular is the fact that this is not their company name. There are also actual companies out there with the name pwnage connected to them. There certainly is a huge difference between the two.. “Amazon” is actually their company name.
@ William
Its makes no difference at all if the company is called the same thing as what they are trademarking so what is your point?
If Amazon wanted to start up a grocers called ‘carrots’ they would be perfectly entitled to trademark that name as a grocers as long as it hadnt been done so already by someone else.
If anyone wants to be angry at this they should also be angry at every other company that has trademarked existing words that they dint invent. I’m pretty sure Microsoft didnt invent the word Windows so I imagine you will be posting a story soon complaining about how they have trademarked that in the field of computing the way Futuremark are going to do with pwnage. Macintosh is a type of coat and they were definitely around before Apple trademarked the word in computing so there’s another target for your ire
Yes, Norbit, the problem is those are all legit examples. They make sense. Futuremark at this point in time has no legit reason to trademark something that was probably invented by either 4chan or somethingawful.
@Norbit. That’s the thing though. The term “pwnage” has already been used by numerous companies and individuals. They are obviously just trying to trademark a popular term for profit… a term that has already been coined and used by other business ventures.
that’s almost as lame as trying to trade mark NSFW
@William
What makes you think that they are going to trademark it for profit? I mean, I don’t think they are going to charge money from people or companies.
And besides, terms/words such as LOL have already been trademarked.