I'm just quoting this from another forum, this is ridiculous for indie gamers.

Quote: Throwing this in indie games to help support a fellow indie developer in Mobigame. A few weeks ago, Mobigame's game Edge was pulled from the App Store for unknown reasons. Well, now we know why. It looks like one Tim Langdell believes he owns a monopoly on the word EDGE and is doing his best to be a dick. http://fingergaming.com/2009/05/28/update-edge-pulled-over-alledged-trademark-infringement/

Quote: Langdell, CEO of EDGE Games, GDC 2009 speaker and Lead Game Faculty at National University, contacted Mobigame and Apple in April asking that the game be pulled. Langdell claims his company owns the worldwide “trademark” EDGE. Despite this, the game remains up in other territories.

This is not the first time. Simon Carless wrote a pretty scathing article on Tim Langdell and his trademark on the word EDGE before it got pulled for unknown reasons. Luckily the article's been copied and posted in other places. http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=16044280&postcount=5953

Quote: It looks like trademark suits based around the word 'EDGE' and anything game-related are still occurring, too, too - here's one from March 2009 against Cybernet, who are making an obscure, long-dormant game called Edge of Extinction. According to the suit, brought by Cybernet, Langdell started writing to them in January 2009, demanding that the 'Edge Of Extinction' trademark be assigned to him for free and that a license agreement be signed with Edge Games. When Cybernet refused, and asked for money for the domain transfer, Langdell said to "expect... [a] Federal Law Suit", so Cybernet sued Langdell and Edge. The case appears to be ongoing. And there's some evidence, via a Virginia-based website's PDF, of a series of similar discussions with computer manufacturer Velocity for their 'Velocity Edge' gaming PCs. In this particular document, which is based around a suit by Velocity, the Court finds Edge Interactive liable for several falsehoods related to the suit, including untrue claims that Langdell had resigned from the company and could not receive the countersuit. Overall, the Virginia District Court found a "deliberate strategy [on the part of Edge Interactive] to obfuscate and mislead this Court in order to delay the Court's determination of default." (However, the companies settled confidentially in December 2008 and Langdell now lists 'EDGE game PCs (made by Velocity Micro)' as an 'EDGE branded venture' that he has 'spawned'.) [snip snip...] But now we're seeing great indie developers like Edge creator Mobigame hobbled because Langdell is aggressively enforcing his trademark based purely on a four letter name - rather than a particular style of game or character similarities, if that is even a more justifiable reason to do so. I think that's a major shame and, at least from my personal point of view, a morally repugnant thing to do.

Even if Tim Langdell and Mobigame somehow come to an agreement to get Edge back on the App Store, I hope this story can spread far enough so the negative publicity for these EDGE legal cases becomes an issue for one Mr. Tim Langdell. Note how Tim Langdell for the most part has had nothing to do with the vast majority of projected with the name EDGE in them. He's a vulture. He swoops in for his licensing fee and bullies around people who can't afford fancy lawyers. The story just broke last night so hopefully more details will be forthcoming.

please continue to post this story anywhere.

cheers for that,
Im gonna have to stick the word 'edge' in my next title

Is Apple really so whimsical about what apps it accepts into its store and so trigger happy in pulling them? Seems everyday I hear about this or that app being pulled/denied. From Google to the guy next door. Or are my eyes being clouded by the Availability Heuristic?

Owning trademarks and the such gets too ridiculous. That's like me owning the rights to air. Give it back to me or I'm going to sue you all. :/

I can understand trademarks and see the need for them. I think they went overboard in protecting their trademark in this case, but that's what corporations do.

It's patents that really annoy me. The fact that companies can demand royalties on ideas that often aren't even their own is just insanity. The fact that you can't implement 3D audio without stepping on a patent from Creative Labs is complete BS. There were other cards that did 3D audio first, but their lawyers patented the concept and now they can force the whole world to use their proprietary tech. That's nonsense.

Quote: Original post by Maverick Programmer
Owning trademarks and the such gets too ridiculous. That's like me owning the rights to air. Give it back to me or I'm going to sue you all. :/

I claimed the rights to gravity a few years ago. For some reason nobody is paying up. If I had known I could TM words out of the dictionary I would have tried that. You guys better beat me to "the", "a", and I might try e*.*

Oh yeah? Well I'm going to TM " ". That's right. For every pause or space you leave in text or speech, you pay.

Trademark the "TM" mark itself. FOR GREAT JUSTICE.

Back on topic though, Langdell is really just a total douchebag. Nothing less, nothing more.

For example, Mobigames suggested to him that they rename their game EDGY to avoid infringment. Langdell responded that it wasn't acceptable to just add a 'Y' onto a word that was clearly still infringing on the word EDGE and he was going to sue them into oblivion and ruin their lives.

Now that he's gotten all this negative publicity he turned around saying "Why didn't they just rename it EDGY and avoid all this? I'm the victim!" when he was the one who rejected that very idea in the first place.

That is all you need to know about the waste of oxygen we call Tim Langdell.

The GDNet Daily's been covering this a little.

We might not like what Langdell's doing with his IP in this case, but it would seem to be legal, not least because the US IP system is so horrendously flawed. It's a slimy way to make a living, but it's one the system would seem to permit. In the UK, I believe that you can't trademark a regular English-language word - you can trademark a particular rendering of it, a particular logo style in which it is used, but you can't trademark the word itself. I can only assume that isn't true for the US trademark system.

Either that or Langdell's simply lying. *shrug*

What's more of an issue is that Langdell is on the Board of Directors for the IGDA. Regardless of the legality of his actions, they're definitely harming indy game development more than helping it. To make things worse, the IGDA board have absolutely sucked at communication on this, and have made the organisation look completely uninterested in and disconnected from its members.

There's a petition for a vote on the matter - if 10% of the IGDA's membership sign the petition, then it's constitutionally obliged to hold the meeting and vote. If you're an IGDA member, I'd encourage you to sign the petition even if you don't have an opinion about Langdell; it would seem that the IGDA's mechanisms of democracy are rusty and need exercising, regardless of the outcome.