A 14-year trademark battle over the name ‘Edge’ in gaming nears its close

14.10.2023 - 17:37 / venturebeat.com

Fourteen years ago, Tim Langdell and his Edge Games became a pariah of the game industry. His firm was branded a “trademark troll” in a naming dispute with Mobigame and its president David Papazian over the names Edge and Edge Games in the game business.

Langdell’s Edge Games started making games in the 1980s, but Mobigame created a hit mobile game in 2009 with the name Edge. The two companies have disputed the naming ever since.

Yet Langdell said in an interview with GamesBeat that his company has now emerged largely victorious. As far as we can see, this case isn’t what it seemed, and it’s worth a second look. Revera, an international law firm that doesn’t do work for any of the parties in the dispute, studied the ruling in the United Kingdom and found that Edge Games prevailed over Mobigames earlier this year. Based on the latest ruling, Apple has informed Mobigame that its Edge game will be removed from the Apple App Store. Langdell said he has won favorable legal terms in 36 trademark cases involving Edge in games.

Asked if the company had lost its cases in the U.K. and France, and if Apple had sent a letter saying it could remove Mobigame’s Edge from the App Store, Papazian directed us to comment to his lawyers regarding the U.K. Regarding France, he said, “In France, Mobigame decided not to renew its [trademarks] because it was under the mistaken belief that Langdell had accepted the position and had stopped his activities. As for the UK, I would direct you to [law firm] Sheridans for a comment on the matter.”

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Papazian disputed that Apple had threatened to pull Mobigame’s Edge from the app store pending a legal explanation. He noted Langdell made the original request to remove the game. He said Mobigame has “responded to those requests from Langdell explaining why there is no lawful basis on which to take the game down and it therefore remains on the App Store.” He described Langdell’s defeats as “comedic gold” and said Langdell hasn’t produced anything “genuine” since the 1980s.

For his part, Langdell refutes everything that Papazian said, including showing a copy of the Apple notification. In 2009, Mobigame won over the press in its cause and cast Langdell as a greedy troll who was using the flaws in trademark law to extract a toll from an entrepreneurial startup.

The term “trademark troll” refers to someone who owns a trademark registration for a mark that the person never used at all. That troll uses the registration to threaten people to give the troll money. But a “trademark troll”