In Los Angeles' federal court, Activision has sued, declaring that "Activision's use and registration of the word marks WARZONE and CALL OF DUTY WARZONE do not infringe Defendant’s purported trademark rights in the title of its browser-based strategy game "Warzone"" as first reported by Reuters via Westlaw.
Yes, this is another trademark lawsuit and it's usually very boring, but this lawsuit, in particular, is interesting because Activision seemingly isn't saying that the Warzone.com shouldn't exist, but that a complaint filed by Randy Ficker, the developer of the Warzone.com game is "baseless".
"Call of Duty: Warzone could not be more different from Defendant's game, a low-budget, niche virtual board game like Hasbro's Risk," the complaint said. "Indeed, it is inconceivable that any member of the public could confuse the two products or believe that they are affiliated with or related to each other."
That... seems fairly reasonable. The lawsuit itself explains how Activision is one of the biggest video game publishers in the world and that people should know what Warzone is. People should know that Activision's Call of Duty: Warzone is not a "niche virtual board game", but apparently this is where Ficker disagrees. In his complaint, he stated that due to Activision's Warzone game there had been "massive damages", that it caused "significant customer confusion", and that it had a "large impact" on his business.
Ficker also wants to block Activision from using the "Warzone" name or registering a trademark covering it. While there's little chance that will actually happen, it would be pretty funny if this massive multi-billion dollar corporation loses a lawsuit to a small little indie developer and then has to change the name of one of their biggest products. Not that it has much of a chance of that happening, of course. But the #TeamChaos side of me definitely wants it to happen for the memes and widespread confusion.
We've contacted Activision for comment on this lawsuit, and we'll update this article if and when we get a response. Stay tuned.
What do you think of this news? Which side are you on for this lawsuit? Let us know in the comments!
