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Hazelight Studios, the makers of the co-op game It Takes Two, were faced with a trademark dispute from game publisher Take-Two around the time of their game’s release. Hazelight can’t comment too much, but they’ve let go of the trademark.
Which writes Eurogamer, who spoke to Hazelight. The studio “cannot comment on pending cases” and “hopes the case will be resolved soon.” At the United States Patent and Trademark Office">USPTO can be seen that the trademark It Takes Two from Hazelight marked stands as expressly abandoned, since March 30 of this year. Take-Two signed last year protest against the trademark. A copyright expert told Eurogamer that it is to be expected that Hazelight will settle for the copyright in the game and will no longer pursue the It Takes Two trademark.
According to Eurogamer’s research, Take-Two isn’t just targeting Hazelight. In the past year, the company has filed numerous claims against trademarks and companies using terms similar to Take-Two’s products and names. This concerns, for example, the Chinese trademark Starrocks, clothing brand Max Fayne and many smaller companies that have ‘rockstar’ in their name. Rockstar Games is one of the daughters of Take-Two.
According to Richard Hoeg, the games industry lawyer and copyright expert who spoke to Eurogamer, Take-Two is “very aggressive” on this front compared to similar companies. “Take-Two has filed for renewals in 25 trademark cases in the past three months. Most other game companies take 6 or 7 years to get to that amount.”
Take-Two is not only active in the field of trademarks. The company regularly takes mods for Grand Theft Auto games offline with dmca requests and has the creators of two GTA reverse engineer projects taken to court.
Bekende games en franchises van Take-Two zijn Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, Borderlands, Bioshock, Civilization, L.A. Noire, Mafia, XCOM, The Outer Worlds, Max Payne en Kerbal Space Program.
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