No, that's not right at all Strangesme II. Please refer to the message by ⚙️t⚙️m⚙️t⚙️n

Edited 5/17/2021 06:52:00

"it the law were this easy to figure out, lawyers wouldn't make so much money or stress so much to pass the bar exam."
who was first? the rest is just lawyer shenanigans and mumbo jumbo that means nothing but they get paid "so much money" to figure it out.
Who was first?

this is about money and how Activision wants it for themselves. that is it.

I understand you have some misgivings about lawyers, especially with how they are portrayed in the media. Legal shenanigans are a real thing, but the law is about achieving public policy goals. You cannot simply state that everything is a legal shenanigan. Most of the law is routine, and common-place. And the law, as a whole, does achieve the public policy goals it intends to. You are looking at the exceptions and not the norm, perhaps out of some kind of resentment towards lawyers as a whole.

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TRADEMARK BASICS

About the legal problem at issue, I'll give you an analogy. Suppose you open a pizza store called "Bob's Palace" in Wisconsin. The store does reasonably well. But then, 2 years later, some guy named Bob wants to open a waterpark called "Bob's Palace" in Miami, Florida. The question for you is, can the first Bob stop the second Bob from using the name "Bob's Palace"?

Trademarks are specific, both in location and in scope. The fact that you open a pizza place does not mean you own the words "Bob's Palace" for all intents and purposes. Trademarks are designed to prevent "unfair competition." "Unfair competition" in this context would exist if a reasonable consumer would confuse the waterpark Bob's Palace with the pizza place Bob's Palace. Due to how different the two brands are and how unlikely it is that there is any market overlap between the two brands, you'd be hard-pressed to state that the waterpark is taking any business from the pizza place, let alone unfairly competing with them.

But you must not mistake "unfair competition" with normal fair competition. The unfairness is a requirement. Many of you correctly point out that Activision's actions may damage Warzone. But the mere act of damaging Warzone isn't sufficient to say they are "unfairly competing" with Warzone. In the above analogy, if the Bob's Palace pizza place started to lose sales because a new pizza place, Sally's Corner, opened down the street, would that be unfair competition?

No. Competition, by it's very nature, often involves one brand suffering at the hands of another. You need to cite specific bad or anti-competitive conduct to say the competition is "unfair."

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APPLYING THE BASICS

Now let me ask you another question. Let's suppose there was another "Warzone" game that came out before this one. But that "warzone" game was completely different; there is literally no commonality other than the name. Is Fizzer's version of Warzone" unfairly competing with these previous Warzone games? In other words, is Fizzer's version of the game stealing customers that this earlier game would otherwise have from the NAME alone?

I want you to keep this answer in mind, because it's no longer a hypothetical. It's reality. There were several games called "Warzone" that existed before this game. Now again, I ask you, is Fizzer's game of Warzone unfairly competing with them?

And lastly, I ask this: If you say that Fizzer's game isn't violating the trademark rights of the previous warzone games, how is Activision violating the trademark rights of THIS game? Do you have a logically consistent way of reconciling the two?

It seems to me that the only logically consistent way to resolve the two is to say that Activision's actions are worse because they are a large gaming giant. I know there is a lot of anger towards Activision for other valid reasons, and there is a fear that they are using their money to get an unfair advantage. But stop and think about it. If they weren't a big gaming giant, would there even be this much outrage? The fact that Activision is a giant company isn't reason enough to say they are guilty. If you think it is, then what you really want is class warfare, not any "fair" adjudication of the law.

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CONCLUSION

I'm not going to go into the actual legal analysis of this case because 1) I'm not on the bar yet, and 2) as someone who will be admitted to the bar, I have an ethical obligation to not make careless statements about pending cases. But I hope I have given you some things to consider. The major thing I wish for you to take from this is that the situation is much more nuanced and complex than you are making it out to be. And it certainly isn't just "legal shenanigans."

Edited 5/17/2021 08:15:26

you are saying since there were games called warzone before fizzer changed the name from warlight that future companies that decide to change their name to warzone has the right to claim it? if one of the other older games (still in business) had issue with this one than they win. if fizzer turned on an older company and said they are not allowed to use it anymore because he is bigger and can afford lawyers then he would be a huge turd and should lose in a court of law. Simple.

Or....that all of the warzone games have their own trademark rights but none of them are infringing on each other. That's what I was alluding to.

They can all separately have trademark rights and not infringe on each other if their bubbles don't overlap. You can't simply state that the first person to use a name period has exclusive rights to the name for everything. Like, if I own a store called "Burger", I do not magically own the word burger. Your statement quickly breaks down if you think about it.

I'm not saying that the bubbles do not overlap. I am saying that there is question if they do, and that's all I will say on the matter, as stated above. I tried my best to make my response as clear and explanatory as possible. All I request is that you seriously consider what I'm saying, rather than making knee-jerk conclusions.

God this forum is getting all formal :D

I love it

Edited 5/17/2021 12:56:52

If I were in your shoes, this is how I would read the enemy. They're suing you not with the intention of winning a lawsuit or even going through with the lawsuit. They've done this purely in hopes that you'll get scared and willingly change your game name, in which case, they've won for free. By not changing the name, you're calling their bluff. At this point they'll either step up the pressure (continuing with the hope that you'll change the name voluntarily) or they'll just drop it. I predict that at some point sooner or later, they'll just drop it. They can't win.

I once broke of dealings with an insurance company and several months later they sent me a letter stating I owed them some money with threats to send a collection agency after me. I called them and told them I'm not paying them and I'd gladly go to court and fight it if they want to press the matter. Never heard from them or any collection agency again.

They sent the threat just to see if I'd get scared and willingly send a cheque.

Moosehead, that isn't right at all. Please refer to my previous messages.

Also, the situation here is entirely different. They didn't send Fizzer a letter; they literally filed a complaint in district court. If your point is that they don't want to actually take it to court, they already did.

Why are you so convinced they can't win? Can you cite one reason for why you think that? If not, again, let's just try to support the game in the way we can and not spread misinformation.

well this isn't good

Mr Fizzer. I don't feel so good about this :(

maybe the name could return to Warlight?

Usually the issue with having these giant legal battles isn't that you lose the judgement but that you run dry of money before all the lawsuits close.

I hope they win. fix this game.

Fix game! But doesn’t say what’s wrong with it.

Here is the GoFundMe refund form if you feel you donated to this campaign in part or in full based on the misrepresentation that no cease and desist letter had been sent by Fizzer to initiate the fight: https://www.gofundme.com/contact/suggest/donor

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An Activision win can kill the game, not fix it.

The important part of this case is not whether Activision is able to register the trademark for "Warzone" (the word) in video games in general. Warzone doesn't need much to "win" here: they're fine if they can get the court to even say no one should be able to trademark "Warzone" (the word) that broadly, which even Activision's own arguments sort of lead towards. They can lose the rest of the case- the court could find that Activision does not infringe Warzone's trademark (because they pretty obviously don't), that Activision should get to trademark "Warzone" for FPS games, that Warzone can't trademark "Warzone," etc.- but still be fine as long as Activision doesn't get this broad trademark to a common English word used by dozens of video games before them and as long as Fizzer isn't forced to play Activision's legal fees.

With competent counsel and sufficient funds, Fizzer should be able to pull this off. But if he doesn't, then we're looking at an existential risk: Activision owning the "Warzone" trademark means that Fizzer's apps and search engine listing either live at Activision's mercy (even though the law would probably grandfather Fizzer in, this process would be going through kangaroo courts run by Google and Apple- and if you've use YouTube, you know those tend to side with the big guys more than with the law) or he goes through a possibly costly and risky rebrand for his entire business. Either of those things could nudge this whole enterprise to the point where it no longer becomes financially viable to maintain such a generous, user-friendly game.

It's not the most likely scenario, but it should be an uncomfortably high risk if you care about this game enough to complain about it.

Edited 6/7/2021 05:56:50

"(because they pretty obviously don't)"

it seems like they don't because they are 2 entirely different games, but I contend that they actually do.

Google "warzone" and look how far down our game is (like how is that even possible? warzone.com should come up first, like it used to pre-activision). we lose new players if they can't find us.

one thing fizzer mentioned in his GoFundMe is the twitch stream he was trying to run. it has been completely overrun by cod streamers.

another thing is fizzer routinely gets contacted by cod players asking for help or technical assistance on their game.

it's not that the two businesses rely on the same base of consumers, it's that the internet only cares about activision.

and for the record, I agree with everything else you said

Edited 6/4/2021 18:12:43

hello wannabe lawyers

We all thought that the worst case scenario is that WZ changes name and Fizz pays some $ ... actually worst case is Activation takes over WZ and wrecks it like so many other games.