Can my guild/faction's name similar to a movie or other game title?

[txtk]

For instance, if I named my guild "The Terminators", similar to the movie title, does this considered a trademark violation?

I think the trademark law is the most annoyed obstacle in any type of development involves storyline. It really limited freedom and creativity.

 

[Shaz]

The Terminators is not the name of the movie, so you would not be in violation of any trademarks with that particular one.

 

[Sharm]

A lot of times it's just a matter of how many elements are similar.  So a guild of elven bowmen who hunt food being called Terminators, no problem.  A guild of relentless android assassins, yeah, that might be a problem.

 

[txtk]

I would like to know the basic concept for this issue. Not just faction and "The Terminator" or "The Terminators" but anything else that can be named in a game. For example, could an event in my game called "The Hunger Game"? Could my fantasy world or a place in my game called "Aveyond"? Etc.

 

[Andar]

That is not as easy to generalise - there is a reason why there a lawyers specialising in trademark law...


1) A trademark needs to be registered, it is not automatic - and trademark registering costs, so it's usually only done with main names and logos.


So for any name you are interested in using, you first have to go to the sites of the trademark office/search engine and check if it is registered.


2) Trademarks are registered either for specific areas or in general. If they's registered in general you can't use them, if they're registered for specific areas you can use them in different areas.


3) Some companies are using trademarks aggressively, others not. You should not try to skip the boundaries with trademarks from a company like Disney as that will get you sued fast, while other companies even encourage fangames.


4) Consider for yourself: Why do you want to use that trademark?


If you want it for a parody or similiar reasons, there is a chance that this is protected by fair use


If you want to do that in order to link to that popularity - that will increase the chance of you getting sued because it will be clear that you intended a violation of the trade laws - trademarks are created to prevent exactly that.


And don't think that using such names out of context will only get you positives. If you try to use other names because you have problems coming up with your own, that will be seen by players, and will get you bad remarks for not being original.

 

[txtk]

4) Consider for yourself: Why do you want to use that trademark?

I don't intent to use any trademark. But I have run into problems that whatever logical name that I can think off, when I Googled it to check, it has been used commercially elsewhere. It seem like almost all of good names are taken off the board.

If I create a guild that specialize in assassination in my game, I think "The Terminators" is a much cooler choice than, said, "The Killers", "The Assassinator" etc.

If my storyline have a tournament like the Hunger Game. Even if I intent to avoid the name "Hunger Game", the other choices like "The game of Death" of anything like that is also have been used by some movies.

Time went by and the list of names that we can use get smaller and smaller. That's the sad thing about the trademark law.

 

[Andar]

No - because trademarks are always time-limited. For an example, here in Germany it costs about 250€ to register a trademark for 10 years. To lengthen that time at the end of those 10 years for another 10 years costs around 750€.


And you have to pay that for each area in which you want to hold that trademark: one time for games, one time for books, one time for movies and so on...


And as soon as it is used in a different context where there is no mistaking the name, you have no problems with trademarks - for example if you never plan to sell your game, you will have no problems using that name.


That is where the "trade" in trademark comes from: only commercial use (direct use or indirect as in referencing to a special trademark in a fangame) violates it (that is another difference to copyright).


The indirect use can sometimes be tricky, but if you're clearly using it in a different context than the original and keep non-commercial, trade laws don't matter for you.

 

[txtk]

We used to create free games for the Vietnamese-speaking market and named anything we want. So, I never even think twice about any name. The only consideration is "do I like that name".

Now we plan to create commercial games for the English-speaking market. I'm doing a storyline right now and run into this problem. When I came up with a name, I Googled it to make sure, and sure enough that name have been used somewhere commercially.

 

[Wavelength]

The laws are not quite as stringent as you seem to believe.  Just because someone used a name for something first doesn't mean that using that same name will be in violation of copyright laws - take a look at Wikipedia's disambiguation page for "Crash" as a good example.

You will get in trouble if you blatantly appropriate a character (like Chrono or Mickey Mouse), a brand name (like Starburst or Ford), or a name and full concept (like using the concept of 'Skynet' and calling it 'Skynet').  You will get in even more trouble (and probably sued) if people would reasonably think that you have the endorsement of the company you took the material from, or if you intend to profit from the recognition of the stolen character/brand/etc.

However, you can name your character Mickey or even Chrono as long as it's clearly a different character, without getting in trouble... and you can also parody things pretty safely - for example, you could have a pair of slapstick sword-wielders named Mike and Troy that parody Fire Emblem characters Ike and Roy - but don't even think about copying the sprites from their respective names.  You could have a quest in your game called The Hunger Games (especially if it's about finding food or the like) but you're toeing the line of acceptable when you call a battle royale tournament The Hunger Games.