Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Who’s the REAL Monster?”.
Let’S kick it off with Monster Energy, suing the developer of a game just for having the word monster in the title. The best part is that it doesn’t even have the word monster in the title. It has the word monsters in the title, so they’re suing indie game, developer, glow, stick entertainment over the title of its 2020 horror, game, Dark deception, monsters and Mortals. Yes, what the that the game’s branding is confusingly similar to their Monster Energy trademark, maybe to people that drink monster.
That’S not it! That’S not! No, no! No! No! No hold on a second. This is the this. Is it Luke yeah, so they they put them both.
In like monstery font, but it’s not even a similar month yeah. This is more of like maybe like somewhere between ninja and Diablo yeah, because, like the line through the O and like stuff – and this is obviously Harry yeah – this is hair hair inspired. This is these. Are nothing alike get this and it also has lots of other words in it. It doesn’t even start. Yes, it’s the biggest one, but it doesn’t even start with the word monsters.
It’S even the biggest one. I think Mortals is equally tall. Okay, it’s the biggest one sure it’s the biggest, not by much, though they’re, both they’re, both very large and get this they’re going after them over this, their Studios logo. Oh wait! What glow stick entertainment’s logo looks like this, and monster is insisting that they need to remove the color green from their logo.
Oh come on. I didn’t even know about that part. This is the kind of thing that I’ve got to look at and go. What is the 4D chest that they’re playing here yeah? It is the is the idea that there’s no such thing as bad publicity and anything that gets people talking about monster in any context, is inherently good because, like let’s think about this, for a second, their their beverage tastes like piss water right, I haven’t had a Monster in so long I don’t even know, but like I mean I tried it recently for short circuit with that said: yeah, I’m not the biggest fan of energy drinks and in general, but it was not cool it.
I’M sorry, no amount of extreme. You know athletes doing whatever in their promotional materials is going to make drinking that cool. It might make it. It might energize you or whatever else, but it doesn’t like who knows.
Maybe it has efficacy, but yeah you could you could you could find stuff that that tastes better for sure for the same price or a lower one? There’S there’s also like insane amount of options in that realm. Yeah. Well, yeah! That’S right! So many it’s a super competitive space yeah, so I’m looking at it going the point of this obviously isn’t that anyone will actually confuse your brand. The point of this can’t be to try to draw in a new customer by how cool and magnanimously you are behaving. So the only thing I can think of is that you’ve got enough people out there addicted to your particular formula of piss water, that they’re kind of going oh right monster. I haven’t had one of those in a while by like beating up some indie company all right, they are definitely getting coverage.
I knew about this before I saw it in the dock. So did I foreign? I don’t think we can even pull this because I don’t think we can trust people’s like stated opinions right, you’d have to trust their Market actions, because those are very often not the same thing but like I wonder how effective that’s going to be, because there’s no Way in hell, this would make me want to buy something from Monster. It would do the opposite now, here’s the thing.
This is not even a new behavior for them. They are notorious for these kinds of frivolous nonsense. Lawsuits in 20.
This is great in 2016, monster lost a suit against monster fish Keepers, which is that even is that even still a thing – hey, hey we’re heading to monsterfishkeepers.com: let’s go! This is apparently an aquarium Enthusiast forum support and defend monster fish Keepers. Okay hold on a second. This is from support and defend it. This is an entire sub forum.
We won okay. This is from February of 2016. uh we’ve been battling with Monster Energy since 2014., I have beaten the monster Monster. Energy now has a ruling against its ludicrous and overreaching argument that it owns the word monster. Hopefully this will help the hundreds of other small businesses being bullied by them wow. This is amazing, shout out Neo Prodigy for all. I know you kill cats in your spare time, but from this post alone you seem pretty cool and I’m super into it. Apparently they’ve gone after Pokemon for pocket monsters and they’ve gone after Monster Hunter saying that there is confu there could be confusion in 2022. They tried to block hundreds of trademarks, including Moody monster, a therapy toy for mentally ill children, and the logo of the brook Brookhaven Bears baseball team because it contains claw marks. Oh my hold on I’ve got to see this logo.
Now I mean it, they just they just sound like just idiots. You know like I don’t I don’t know this feels impossible to actually Implement impossible to police impossible to manage. We probably shouldn’t actually do it, but it would be cool if there was like some type of thing that would Monitor and detect stuff like this and be like. You are overly abusing your rights, blah blah blah blah, and then you just lose your trademark just screw. It like no you’ve done you’ve done too much. You’Ve gone too far. You’Re just trying to use the people in float plane are talking about Kylie Jenner versus Kylie Minogue. What in 2014, Kylie Jenner wanted to register her name as a trademark, but was prevented by singer? Kylie Minogue wait: wait. She wanted to register Kylie just Kylie, you shouldn’t be able to register names or just Standard English words or words in any other language, really bad. The thing is that you can at least oh hold on I’ve got the Brookhaven Bears logo.
This doesn’t even look like the monster, slash God it doesn’t it’s not that the monster. Slash is very it’s like three railroad. Spikes like this is this is it’s it’s very specific. This is obviously inspired by a bear, not a monster and does not evoke the look of the Monster Energy logo at all.
Now the point is not that they think they’re necessarily going to win this. A major reason for these lawsuits, aside from harassment protecting your trademark, because is it trademarks that, if you don’t protect them, that you can you can lose them? So, aside from protecting your trademark is just to um just to bully and intimidate others into giving in because of the threat of a long and expensive legal battle. Um, apparently, though, glow stick entertainment plans to fight the lawsuit in court and is currently pushing for a summary dismissal. The discussion question here I mean, is pretty much what we’ve already talked about.
What is the motivation for Monsters perspective? Wouldn’T the risk of consumers seeing this and going wow what a bunch of jerk wads um outweigh any possible benefit, but then you know I got ta ask like you: drink Monster Energy like your standards, are pretty low. I guess so. No! I have a question. I actually don’t care you drink.
Whatever energy drink you want, when are you suing Linus, bicycles, right, right or or um? Oh man, there’s this other there’s. This other sounds pretty similar. There could be confused.
There has been confusion. We have documented confusion that legitimately has caused confusion. We should sue the Linux Foundation.
I get called Linux on a fairly regular basis, especially acceptable whose second language is English yeah, because it’s just I don’t know s x, same thing right. You wan na you wan na you wan na lose a lot of fans. Let’S go, let’s go sue. The Linux Foundation. That’Ll go really well. This is just stupid. I hate it yeah. I don’t know in some like I like. I wasn’t even I wasn’t even super mad over the the dumb Tech poach thing with Peak designs like our Peak design, whatever it is, I I wasn’t even that mad, because it’s like yeah trademarking, just a descriptive name, is something we could probably fight, and it’s super Dumb, but I don’t care now: it’s the tech sack and it’s selling great, like it just it’s a funnier name anyway.
It doesn’t matter not necessarily a better name, but it’s a funnier name. This is far far more frivolous, yeah yeah. This is ridiculous.
Apparently they actually filed against Ubisoft over the title of the game. Gods and Monsters and Ubisoft did change the name to Immortals Phoenix, Rising, ending the dispute. My understanding, though, is that in the games industry, it is extremely common to just like have to change the name of your game in the lead up to launch, just because it’s such a well there’s so many games yeah, it’s such a crowded space um and when, Like this genuinely happens by the way, we’ve played them they’re kind of funny sometimes, but people will take like Unity, demos and spend like I don’t know a day or less editing it and then just put it on Steam and sell it. When you can do that with any number of names for your games, yeah like uh the the chance that a name that is similar to the name of the game, that you’re going to release is already out because of of any reason is extremely high. Very very high, so in summary, monster sucks, yeah choosing other uh energy drink. If you drink energy drinks, yeah .