Somebody should stop them because, in the last case, the company hit an indie studio (we wrote about it). Still, a much bigger company has been hit by Coca-Cola, more precisely, its energy drink monster (literally…).

We would like to ask Monster Energy’s lawyers to find something more meaningful to do with themselves because there have been previous instances of a significant gaming industry company having to change the name of its game because they dared to use the word Monster, or a variant of it, in the title! That’s why Ubisoft (not a small company) was forced to rename Immortals: Gods & Monsters to Immortals: Fenyx Rising, except that the lawyers didn’t seem to realize that gamers are one of Monster’s target audiences and that the game itself in no way referred to the company’s products…

Japan’s Automaton reported that Monster Energy had filed a trademark objection against Capcom’s Monster Hunter and Nintendo and Game Freak’s Pokémon, which the company claims are IPs that could be confused with its brand (explanation for Pokémon: in Japan, it goes by the name Pocket Monsters.) The Japanese patent office replied, “there is no risk of confusion as to the product’s origin.” Maybe it’s Monster Energy causing it (and if some crazy company wants to get publicity for itself and has the word Energy in its title, it can take similar action against Monster Energy…).

If Nintendo were to be threatened by Coca-Cola, it’s possible that the big N could win in court, as the Japanese company often threatens with legal action over fan games and ideas made from its IP, not to mention emulation (perhaps Microsoft is banning emulation on Xbox Series because of them, we wrote about that the other day).

The Monster Energy mindset is not to be followed. As idiotic as their approach is, it’s better not to understand it.

Source: PSL