Trademarks Are Both "Warzone", Browser Game Developers Raising Funds to Fight Activision's Demands
Copyright is indeed a troublesome and lengthy affair. An indie developer named Randy Ficker is currently arguing about his mobile game and browser entitled "Warzone" because of the similarity of one word to the successful game published by Activision - Call of Duty: Warzone.
Ficker and Activision are currently having copyright issues because of the name "Warzone" on their game. It all started when Activision tried to register the two brands “Call of Duty: Warzone” and also “Warzone” in the US trademark in June last year. Immediately, Randy Ficker did not accept the submission, seeing that the name submitted was the same as the trademark of the game he was working on.
Warzone by Ficker was released in 2017, while Call of Duty: Warzone was only launched last year. In terms of time and law, Ficker is in the right position to see he used the name first before Activision, but that did not stop the confrontation between the indie developer and the giant publisher.
In April 2021, Activision filed a lawsuit against Warzone.com for trying to threaten the publisher and for doing "major damage" because of its actions that have restricted the use of the Warzone name on other companies' products.
To finance the legal process, Randy Ficker opened the GoFundMe campaign. At the time of writing, the campaign has been funded for $ 12,802 out of a target of $ 50,000.
Reporting from PC Gamer, Activision explained that there would be no mistake between its popular game and the game from Ficker which they called a niche in public. "Call of Duty: Warzone is very different from the defendant's game, which is a low budget game, a virtual board that is as niche as Hasbro's Risk game," said the legal team from Activision. "It's hard to imagine anyone confusing the two products or even believing that the two are related or related to one another."
Ficker strongly denies these claims. He shows his game category on Twitch as evidence, which is filled by streamers who don't play their Warzone game but Call of Duty: Warzone. He also said that many streamers who actually play his games are frustrated by the mistake.
Not only that, he also received complaints from Xbox or PS4 players who complained about COD: Warzone to him too often, starting from cases of hackers or being unable to log in, and various other technical problems. The “wrong server” complaint has occurred since the Activision battle-royale game was released last year.
"Activision's action has buried us in Google and the App Store, where we are usually in first place for the name," said Ficker.
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