Guarantee its the crypto site. Those things are notorious for copystriking anyone who has anything remotely similar. Also its wierd because the businesses are different, so copyright shouldnt be an issue?
The whole thing stinks of copyright abuse
Viewing post in What copyright issues did the old jam name run into?
It doesn’t matter if they’re in different businesses, a trademark is a trademark.
If I were to make a Mickey Mouse energy drink, I’d still violate disneys copyright, as they own the rights to Mickey Mouse and all uses of that character.
I do think this scenario is quite scummy though, i don’t know why a crypto company would go after a random, obscure game jam that doesn’t even gain any monetary value, it’s just for fun,
I can’t seem to find any exact answer as to when the crypto GeoJam first released compared to this yearly game jam, so I can’t evaluate who should have copy protection over the name (pretty sure whoever used it first has the rights to use it regardless of a trademark due to some copy protection law in the US iirc, I’m not a lawyer though)
Not exactly
It would be like if your name was Mickey and you decided to make a Mickeys sports drink.
Copyright, a form of intellectual property law, protects original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture
It does not cover a name like that.
Also the Mickey Mouse character goes into public domain on January 1 st of 2024 so technically anyone has fair rights to use it then ;)
Cant wait for the just-okay horror film of Mickey Mouse!
Just kidding, im glad its gonna finally go into public domain!
Though however, i dont think you got the point of what i said. if you made a sports drink named "Mickey", obviously it wouldnt fall into a copyright violation, as nobody can own a basic name. however, if the name of your sports drink has the words "mickey MOUSE", and has the branding of the characters of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, etc. then it'd be in violation of Disneys' current copyright, regardless of different markets.