Trademarks and copyrights are important… but holy shit companies do some silly things with them sometimes. The latest of which is the makers of Candy Crush Saga trying to trademark both the words ‘candy’ and ‘saga.’ Not combined as they appear in the title of the game, but as two separate entities.

The excuse the companies always use is “Well, the consumer will get confused if two products use similar words.” I don’t know. Maybe. I could see a point where devs are purposely sticking similar words in their titles in order to dupe less tech-savvy users into grabbing the wrong app after they heard their knitting club raving about “that addictive candy game on their future-phone.” That’s possible, and there should be some means by which to defend your brand.

But I do not think the majority of people are so downright stupid as to confuse Candy Crush Saga with The Banner Saga, an animated viking-based strategy game on Steam. That seems like a stretch, don’t you think? I don’t think Candy Crush is even on Steam.

I’m not a lawyer, but I have to imagine most of these broad filings trying to claim ownership over a common english word are fairly easy to oppose on an individual basis. But that takes resources, and I think it would leave smaller developers at a disadvantage, now faced with spending precious capital on defending a ridiculous claim.

If this is the ballgame we’re playing now, then I think Hasbro should jump in and file against Candy Crush.

And as an aside… why no love for the word ‘crush?’ Candy and Saga are important enough to protect, but Crush can be thrown to the wolves, to be used and fondled in all manner of innapropriate ways? Where’s the word-equality, here?