03 Oct
Posted by David Miller as Card Games, Modern Board Games
Terrible People, creators of the recently funded Kickstarter project for Terrible Things, have decided to change the name of their game. Why? Because they received a cease-and-desist letter on behalf of Quinn & Sherry and Patch Products, the developers and publishers of The Game of Things.
The letter that Terrible People received specifically states:
We are concerned that your use of the name TERRIBLE THINGS on an identical type of product, a game, will cause consumer confusion.
In further correspondence, attorneys for Quinn & Sherry and Patch explained:
A game with the word THINGS in the title may appear to consumers to be a variation or themed version of the THINGS… game. Thus, a name with THINGS in it is likely to be too close to the THINGS… trademark.
So basically, their claim is that any game with the word “things” in the title could be confused with Quinn & Sherry’s trademark for “THINGS…“.
In a response to accusations that many other games over time have used the word “things”, Quinn & Sherry, on the company’s Facebook page, state that these “none of them are ‘funny’ ‘party games’.”