from the namecheck dept

This will be a quick one, but we now have a name and confirmation of a detail from a previous post. A couple of weeks back, we discussed how an unreleased game from developer Fntastic, The Day Before, was both having its release date pushed back and dealing with takedowns of a bunch of footage from streaming sites due to a trademark dispute. Fntastic, which I should mention hasn’t always been seen as a trustworthy source of information in the past, nevertheless indicated that a company with a calendar app and a trademark by the same name as the game was the source of the trademark dispute.

Well, that can now be confirmed and with a name to boot. Lee Sun-jae is the Korean CEO of the company behind the “The Day Before” calendar app and representatives of the developer confirmed it was trying to enforce its trademark rights.

“We first distributed the app under the name ‘The Day Before’ in 2010 to provide anniversary count app services used in many countries around the world,” the app developer stated. “We hold trademark rights to the app’s name ‘The Day Before’ and have so far recorded over 40m downloads. Since the trademark registration in Korea in 2015, we have held the right (registered in the name of ‘The Day Before’ CEO Lee Sun-jae). Knowing that the game of the same name was produced, we are taking measures to protect trademark rights.

We currently hold trademark rights in Korea, the United States, China, Russia, Japan, Vietnam, and the European Union.”

All of which may be absolutely true, but this still doesn’t make any sort of sense whatsoever. In the United States at least, having a trademark in general doesn’t mean that anyone doing anything by the same name or term constitutes trademark infringement. The categories for the mark have to be the same, as does the marketplace in which the two entities are competing. There has to either be real customer confusion, or potential for confusion.

In this case, one of these products is a video game and the other is a mobile app for a calendar. Those two things aren’t remotely similar and it is wildly unlikely that anyone in the public is going to be confused due to both existing. And, based on some of the commentary from the app-maker, there might be some confusion as to what trademark law does and does not do.

“We want to solve the trademark problem as soon as possible and continue to protect the app so that users can use it without worrying,” it concluded.

Yeah, your app and users are just fine. Nobody is going after your app and those using it aren’t going to go hunting for a calendar app and accidentally buy a video game set in a zombie apocalypse.

Assuming Fntastic’s game is actually real and worth fighting back on this, the game studio shouldn’t have much trouble getting a declaratory judgement if it seeks one.

Filed Under: calendar, lee sun-jae, likelihood of confusion, the day before, trademark, video game Companies: fntastic