What better way to introduce gamers to your new game company than with controversy and the appearance of greed? Apparently, that was the battle plan for the Finnish® Futu®emark Co®po®ation, when they rolled out their new game studio, creatively christened Futu®emark Games Studios®. Rather than announce an exciting new game concept or the acquisition of some killer IP, they decided it would be better to try and buy up the popular gamer slang term “pwnage®” by registering it as a trademark. As you can probably guess, gamers were enamored with the idea.
To make matters worse, Futu®emark’s official gaming-news mouthpiece, Yougame®s, posted a non-official response to the hub-bub, (originally broken by Kotaku® and several other sites– all of them are ®) stating that they weren’t planning on trying to own the term, or charge people from using it. They said that they were just trying to protect themselves against someone else buying it up and suing them. Nevermind (probably ® by Nirvana) that according to basic trademark law, one of the surest ways to LOSE a trademark is to allow others to willy-nilly use your trademark® without showing due diligence in defending it. That’s right, one of the few ways to protect it is to sue people and issue cease and desist orders.
To make matters worse the company® then posted its official ®esponse to the criticism by making THIS POST® on their main site, basically mocking the “gamers” (pronounced “livelihood” in English) who were bothered by the obvious attempt by a corporation to encroach on the slang term they’ve been over-using for years, putting on T-shirts®, and captioning numerous photos with.
I have only begun to defile myself…. more on page 2.
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^ What the heck?
The term, “pwn,” is the worst slang ever. It should be abolished immediately.
Is asshat taken? I’d like ® asshat…
Maybe next Futuremark will attempt to ® FTL!!!
The obnoxious use of ® really made this article. I giggled inside every time I saw it in there
@ Anski
Ditto i laughed alot from those.
this is horrible how can they do that!
its stuff like this that pisses me off
the term pwn and pwned comes from people miss spelling owned and then the phrase catching on
Not the first time they do something stupid:
http://www.hardocp.com/news.html?news=MTE2MjUsT2N0b2JlciAgLDIwMDQsaGVudGh1c2lhc3Q=
Trademark is not the same as copyright or patent. Its not that big a deal, really….
Sure this isn’t yet another hilarious April Fool? In March?
Well I think it if their intentions are genuine then it is really quite noble of them. They aren’t Registering Pwnage for their usage, they are Registering Pwnage to protect the free use of it. Personally I’m surprised some philanthropic billionaire hasn’t already done something like this before.
Consider that Futuremark Game Studios becomes as popular as Epic, id Software, or Bungie and use the term Pwnage in their marketing strategy. If they hadn’t prevented it someone could feasibly Register the term then sue Futuremark for their judicious and shameless use of Pwnage.
I would like to believe that they have no intention of protecting their Registration, but rather that their intentions are to protect the use of Pwnage itself.
I’m disgusted with a bunch of non-trademark/IP attorneys trying to discuss something they don’t know about. It’s like Foxnews talking about Mass Effect withoutplaying the game, and gamers criticizing them.
You guys are probably confusing trademark with copyright/patent. Trademarks are used to identify a source of goods/products/services. Just like sarcastic gamer, neither of which are unique words. But now you own a trademark (a trademark only need to be used, not filed, to be created) and nobody else can create a site called sarcasticgamer (domain issues aside) or anything very similar which can cuase confusion.
Hyvä Suomi
(Way to go Finland)
Joe D is correct. Good point man.
Try reading this article out loud saying register instead of ®, even going so far as to half pronounce words, stopping in the middle to say “register”. It brings great laughs. TRY IT NOOOOOWWWW!!!! please…