Reserving the name of your game

General Discussions
#1

Hi All,

I’m creating my first game and I’m about 6-8 months away from a release. I plan to release for Desktop, Android, and iOS. My original plan was to release for android and desktop first and then later for iOS.

One thing that concerns me is reserving the name for my game and making sure I can actually get the name that I want. I’m concerned that I may have issues reserving the name for one of the platforms and having branding and other related issues. How do you guys deal with this? I looked on Google Play and iOS app store and don’t see the name of my game, so I guess that is a good sign.

Thanks!

#2

Having a rememberable unique name does certainly help with marketing, but unless you are accidently stumbling upon someone’s trademark you should not have any problems there.
I also do not think either of the app stores require unique names, that would probably not even work.
The only thing to keep an eye on reserving is probably a domain name, in case you want to have a site for your game.

#3

Having a good name is quite important, whereas “good” is of course vague and has a lot of design and marketing factors.
You should worry too much in the beginning considering the law, but you WANT to have a unique name so that people will quickly find your game when googling the name and not 3746 other products.

Law wise, the things that can happen are:
Some asks you or even cease and desists you to change your name. This can be all bark and no bite because unless the company has a very solid trademark, there is not much grounds for this. Remember even Bethesda and Mojang settled out of court for “Scrolls” which probably means Bethesda said “just… please dont use the name, we will give you money too”
On its own there is no law preventing you to make a book, song, movie, game or whatever with a title that already exists, many movies have the same title and have nothing to do with each other.

But ideally and for your own interest and advantage you ought to choose a name that reflects your game and is unique so marketing wont be blurry.

If you call it “Super Jump Boy”… gonna be tough x)
Might also exist, I would assume.

#4

As for “reserving” itself. There is no real mechanism here. Companies usually buy the websites when knowing what kinda title the movie or game will have. Other than that there is trademarks again but yea… thats not really something you should consider so early of course.

#5

Thanks for the replies. My biggest concern was releasing for something like android had having no problems, but then a few months later not being able to release for iOS with the same name because of some issue with the name being taken/similar. Sounds like I shouldn’t worry about that.

Thanks!

#6

The only way to even reserve a name is via Trademarks or copyright. Trade marks are specific to what it is for. In other words just because someone is using a given name for something doesn’t mean you can’t either. You just have to be in different “industries” such that there is no likelihood to confuse the different brands. Most countries have trademark databases you can search.

Copyright is much more country specific. Lots of names wouldn’t be copyright-able in many countries.

The good news is, if you can’t “reserve” a name. Neither can anyone else.

#7

and just because I took a class on copyright I should bring up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality, just to make people aware its actually a legal concept.
Which is another reason why the “Scrolls” dispute was pretty weak.