Lima Sky’s batshit craziness driven by other dev being totally batshit mental insane
Pocket Gamer dot BZZZZ reports that Lima Sky’s cancelled its threats to smack all other iOS doodle games with a legal shovel of doom, but also reveals why this spat happened in the first place. Apparently, another dev was trying to get Lima Sky’s Doodle Jump mark cancelled (Lima Sky’s Igor Pusenjak refers to “Bryan Duke’s big-house law firm”). Their argument: since Lima Sky didn’t prevent other devs using the word ‘doodle’, it shouldn’t have the rights to ‘Doodle Jump’, which sounds about right. IF YOU’RE A CRAZY PERSON.
The end result appears to be that Lima Sky’s still going to go for a limited number of devs, but those who are riffing off the Doodle Jump name or that have ripped off or copied characters, which is fair enough. Pusenjak seems rattled by the harsh press reaction, saying he’s saddened that “so many of you were so quick to jump to conclusions based on incomplete and incorrectly reported information, and without even hearing the other side of the story,” but on hearing the other side of the story, I’m saddened that an indie developer felt the need to threaten 700 apps rather than just the ones they needed to.
A one-all draw here, I think.
My head hurts trying to understand it – but Bryan Duke of Acceleroto is not as batshit crazy as you might think – he was going to release a game called Doodle Hockey and Igor of Lima Sky asked him to rename it – Bryan did not as they did not have a trademark on all ‘Doodle’ games and wouldn’t get the trademark if they did apply for it, which they did and were shot down for. Where this becomes murky is in the series of events leading up to Lima Sky sending the takedown notices (especially the actual Doodle Jump trademark being attemptedly canceled – this might be a misexplanation from Igor as the ‘Doodle’ trademark has been fought) and I can’t quite figure out what’s going on – but I don’t think that either side is batshit insane – it’s just been some escalation of trademark defense to a point beyond what anyone intended.
The lesson here is that we, the developers and the consumers included, NEED TO STOP MAKING AND BUYING FUCKING DOODLE APPS. Try something else for once!
Mm. It’s all a bit BWUH? and shows that some people really don’t know how to defend marks, nor understand when and why one needs defending. It’s a pity Tim Langdell’s dickery didn’t make people pause for thought. And, yes, I fully agree about doodle apps. Most would be better with non-doodle graphics, but there you go. Once something’s a success on the App Store, loads of others want a share of the glory.