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News: Celebrating 30 years of Star Control 2 - The Ur-Quan Masters

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Author Topic: http://www.atari.com/us/starcontrol/  (Read 17143 times)
Draxas
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Re: http://www.atari.com/us/starcontrol/
« Reply #30 on: August 20, 2009, 06:49:50 am »
Sounds like a weird gray area to me. Most likely it would simply alert the trademark holder to do something more substantial with their IP while the suit is going on, in order to render the verdict moot, since nobody had actually tried to infringe upon it yet.
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Angelfish
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Re: http://www.atari.com/us/starcontrol/
« Reply #31 on: September 09, 2009, 03:33:36 am »
Quote from: meep-eep on August 16, 2009, 07:21:38 pm
I just took a closer look at the .swf file of this game. I have found that some of the the .jpg files which are part of this file have a last modification date in their meta-data. In all cases, the date is either 2007-09-16 or 2007-09-17, giving even more credibility to the theory that this game was indeed only created so that Atari could put it on their "Declaration of Use In Commerce" submitted to the USPTO on 2007-09-18.

I'll leave you with this snippet from http://www.trademarkedge.com/resources/glossary/t.htm:
Quote
Token Use
This term refers to uses of a trademark that are purely for the purpose of securing rights in a that mark, as opposed to any true interest in or expectation of making commercial sales. A manufacturer may, for example, sporadically ship a few boxes bearing the mark, but does so with no particular intention that the mark will become associated with the source of the goods. 

If a mark becomes challenged on the grounds of abandonment, the trademark owner will need to prove use in commerce, and token uses will not suffice.




I just came to the same conclusion.. It's up to TFB to get their lawyer in action and challenge this trademark! That is, if they are really interested in obtaining it again.
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Angelfish
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Re: http://www.atari.com/us/starcontrol/
« Reply #32 on: September 11, 2009, 03:13:53 pm »
If anyone's interested, I've started a discussion about this phenomenon on gamedev.net . It appears that no developer has trouble with making bogus token trademark use games to keep the stove burning.
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=546849
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Alvarin
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Re: http://www.atari.com/us/starcontrol/
« Reply #33 on: July 10, 2010, 09:33:02 pm »
I was reading Wikipedia, they have mentioned this "game" and I wanted to play it again. Guess what - it's no longer on the Atari site anywhere.
Does this mean that Star Control brand is open? Or the fact they had something by the name Star Control for some time enough for them to retain the trademark?
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onpon4
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Re: http://www.atari.com/us/starcontrol/
« Reply #34 on: July 10, 2010, 11:00:27 pm »
Wow, take a look at that. The last post in this thread (before Alvarin's last post) was posted roughly 8 years after 9/11. XD

WAYYYY off-topic, but I just had to mention that. Tongue
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meep-eep
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Re: http://www.atari.com/us/starcontrol/
« Reply #35 on: July 10, 2010, 11:13:56 pm »
Quote from: Alvarin on July 10, 2010, 09:33:02 pm
I was reading Wikipedia, they have mentioned this "game" and I wanted to play it again. Guess what - it's no longer on the Atari site anywhere.
Does this mean that Star Control brand is open? Or the fact they had something by the name Star Control for some time enough for them to retain the trademark?
They needed to show use of the trademark to be able to renew their registration of the trademark.
Once renewed, the own the trademark for 10 years.
But it's doubtful that their registration would stand up in court, were anyone to challenge it.
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