[Kickstarter] Subverse by FOW Interactive (NSFW) UPD: EA release

I think you've been staring at the screen too long!

Have you heard of a Doujin artist named Raita?

Instead of asking (or speaking) for themselves, some people pretend to ask on behalf of a friend when the subject is exposing or embarassing.
The game looks interesting because of the rather unusual genre-mix, but somehow I doubt it will deliver good enough gameplay.

Thanks for the update, I still hate myself but just a little less now

Thanks for the interesting info! I'm no law expert, so I guess I'll wait for the court to decide who's right in this conflict. But I guess woorst case would be the devs forced to change the name of Subverse to something else. I doubt that would hurt the game

It depends on the state/circuit. There was a supreme court recently where I understand it was concluded that the trademark has to be approved before starting legal action.

It's actually a trademark violation if they can prove that it affects perception of their brand, or easily leads to misperception that the product is associated with their brand. Being within the same field makes that a lot more likely to be an issue [for obvious reasons, really], but isn't in any way a requirement.

Rather, even using your own trademark in ways that weaken its inherent brand association can lead to issues in maintaining your trademark, so it's actually fairly intuitive that someone else doing something that could weaken your brand association would be of issue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_dilution would be a good source for reading up on that topic. Namely, the second paragraph:

Dilution is a basis of trademark infringement that applies only to famous marks. With a non-famous mark, the owner of the mark must show that the allegedly infringing use creates a likelihood of confusion as to the source of the product or service being identified by the allegedly infringing use: it is highly unlikely a likelihood of confusion will be found if the products or services are in unrelated markets. With a famous mark, any other use has the potential for confusion, since consumers may assume affiliation with the owner of the mark regardless of the product or service.

Legally speaking, if it was a made-up word that had already been registered, or a brand deemed to be recognizable beyond a specific niche, then there'd be grounds to defend the trademark outside of the same field. Subverse is a legitimate (albeit barely used) term with easy recognizability in meaning (by way of the fact that other versions of the word, such as subvert and subversive, are still part of common use), no trademark was established prior to the other company's usage of the term, and this random youtuber seems to be barely recognizable even within the fringes of his own field.
From all of those elements, as you said, there should be absolutely no legal basis for the legal action the youtuber in question is pursuing. (Which really makes you wonder about the integrity and quality of their lawyer, that they're encouraging the pursuit..)

Anyway, on to your specific example:
McDonald's is a generic name, so it's somewhat hard to defend without there being a clear overlap in application, especially if you yourself have a direct association [eg, your own last name] with the name. However, even with the most solid of legal standing for your usage of the name, McDonald's would inherently be directed to pursue defense anyway, just to show they're still maintaining their trademark (as per the linked page above).

Moreover, given a large company's superior legal and financial capabilities, they'd be readily capable of blocking casual bumps against their trademark even without them having solid justification for the defense, so even a tenuous claim to trademark dilution would be enough of a threat that it becomes rather advisable for developing companies to avoid any kind of overlap with existing trademarks.

However, defense is not required when it can be shown that the trademark holder perceived the infringement to have "minor and inconsequential impact to one's brand" [an exception that's there specifically to give companies a way to not have to over-obsessively defend their trademark for the most petty of infringements]. That, combined with the waste that would come from the associated legal fees, means that McDonald's would be very unlikely to pursue some obscure uitilization of the name, or a utilization within a completely unrelated field.
Of course, if you're talking about releasing to something like Steam, you'd be blocked by Valve at a casual request by McDonald's, so that'd do a lot to maintain your inconsequentialness [given that all other major platforms are curated to begin with]. :P

Thus, while it's a bit more complicated a matter than your "no problem" suggests, in the end you're likely correct in that you could release games under the company title of McDonald's without issue. I mean, I'm assuming your first game won't be called Big Mac and won't involve an obese guy runningsegway-ing around under yellow arches. With that, you may still have some problems. :P

But I never even left the search engine's page! :D

Oh, I forgot that I had to log in to Steam because of "expression."(´>Θ<`)ゝ))
I think it is an interesting game.
However, there is no translation into the native language.
Tell your friends about this game and you will see what happens. (*'Θ'c彡👊))🌏

Aside from the Chinese dropout, you were almost correct. GJ

Do you know a place to see this list? I am curious what is included in it.
I tried to search for a list but it seems that my Google-Fu is not good enough.
Or i am just to lacy ;)