King, the app developer behind popular game Candy Crush Saga, sparked controversy this week when it started issuing takedown notices to several games that had the word “candy” in their title. However in a statement released today, King denies that it’s trying to take down every single candy-related game from the App Store and it says that it only trademarked the word “candy” to protect itself against blatant copycats of its popular game.
“We have trademarked the word ‘CANDY’ in the EU, as our IP is constantly being infringed and we have to enforce our rights and to protect our players from confusion,” the company explains. “We don’t enforce against all uses of CANDY – some are legitimate and of course, we would not ask App developers who use the term legitimately to stop doing so.”
The company then explains specifically why it decided to issue a takedown notice to the game Candy Casino Slots.
“The particular App in this instance was called ‘Candy Casino Slots – Jewels Craze Connect: Big Blast Mania Land,’ but its icon in the App store just says ‘Candy Slots’, focusing heavily on our trademark,” King argues. “As well as infringing our and other developer’s IP, use of keywords like this as an App name is also a clear breach of Apple’s terms of use. We believe this App name was a calculated attempt to use other companies’ IP to enhance its own games, through means such as search rankings.”
Below is the icon that’s currently being used by Candy Casino Slots:
This is Candy Crush Saga’s App Store icon:
We’ll leave it up to you to decide whether they’re similar enough to confuse Candy Crush Saga players.
