Who Will Claim Your Title, If Not You? Trademarks in the US and EU
A practical look at trademark registration for games and apps in the US and the EU: we'll explore the key obstacles, compare the two processes, and explain how to maintain trademark protection after registration.
Event language:
Russian
Time codes
- 00:00 - Introduction: what this webinar is about and who is speaking
- 03:24 - Poll: do you already have a trademark?
- 05:36 - The four who can take your title
- 06:06 - The bad-faith competitor: Clicker Heroes, Wordle and Lethal Company
- 13:18 - The disgruntled partner: Zioness and WorldBox
- 24:00 - The patent troll: Edge Games versus Mobigame
- 30:12 - Someone simply filed before you: The Day Before and Grim Guardians
- 38:12 - A trademark is not only a shield: Steam, YouTube and the app stores
- 42:00 - How Europe differs from the US
- 47:48 - If you can afford only one filing: priority date and Section 44(e)
- 50:36 - Challenges on the way to registration. First: likelihood of confusion
- 52:00 - The Cube: 5 oppositions, 13 months of talks, 27 drafts of one agreement
- 55:54 - What the owner of an earlier mark wants — and what to do about it
- 01:04:18 - Three takeaways on choosing a name
- 01:08:06 - Challenge 2: a name built from common words (Merge Farm Craft Town)
- 01:11:18 - The distinctiveness scale: from generic to fanciful
- 01:15:54 - MA-9 Belyash and Hidden Cats: when descriptiveness can be overcome
- 01:21:30 - Challenge 3: the name has to be decent
- 01:24:32 - How to keep an eye on your trademarks
- 01:25:24 - Q&A
Your title is how players find your game, remember it and recommend it. It's also the one part of the product you can lose because someone else filed an application before you did.
On October 13, Futura Digital is hosting a webinar on how trademark registration in the US and the EU actually works. We'll walk the whole route level by level, from the first database search to the declaration of use you'll file in year six. Anton Maslov, Chief Legal Officer at Mundfish, joins us with the recent experience of registering in Europe.
We'll explore the following topics:
- Who can take your title, and why it isn't always bad faith.
- How the European route differs from the American one.
- We'll go through the four obstacles that most often stop applications from games and apps, and what your options are at each one.
- We'll also cover what begins after registration — declarations of use, renewals, and how a mark loses protection by becoming a generic word.
Guest speakers
- Anton Maslov — Chief Legal Officer, Mundfish
