Video Game ‘The Day Before’ Dealing With Trademark Challenge Over A Calendar App
from the the-horror dept
We’ve dealt with a great many silly trademark disputes in the video game industry over the years, but this one is a special kind of stupid. Fntastic, the studio behind the forthcoming The Day Before horror game, has released a couple statements lately regarding an apparent ongoing trademark dispute. The first announcement confirmed that the game’s release date was being pushed back due to Steam blocking the game page at the request of a trademark holder for “The Day Before.” Then, shortly after, YouTube began removing videos promoting The Day Before from the developer’s channel as well.
So… what’s going on here? Well, like I said, it’s actually quite stupid. Months after Fntastic announced its game back in 2021, someone out there who had made a calendar app went and got a trademark on “The Day Before” and in recent days began complaining to Steam and YouTube to get all this content taken down. Yes, a calendar app.
“First Steam and then YouTube removed some of The Day Before videos from our channel due to a trademark dispute,” Fntastic’s latest statement reads. The Day Before’s release date, which was supposed to be March 1, was recently delayed eight months. Fntastic claims the reason for that is due to someone else filing a trademark for The Day Before, preventing the studio from doing so.
This most recent statement actually sheds a little more light on what exactly Fntastic is claiming has happened, revealing who filed a trademark for The Day Before. “The so-called ‘owner’ of the rights to the title is the creator of the calendar app, which has nothing to do with the games category,” the statement reads. There’s an app called TheDayBefore which is presumably what Fntastic is referencing.
Is this an attempt at a money-grab? It certainly smells like one. The trademark gets filed a few months after Fntastic announces its game. Attempts to take down content and delay the game launch occur just before the launch date. And, in a separate statement, the studio says the owner of the trademark has requested contact for a discussion, ostensibly for some kind of arrangement that involves an exchange of money.
Except here’s the thing: calendars are not video games. Either the trademark holder has the mark in that category or they do not. And if they do not, know they do not, and know that Fntastic’s use does not infringe but submitted takedown requests for this content anyways, well, that’s arguably fraud.
And if all of that is true, then Fntastic should be taking this individual to court for a declaratory judgement that its use is non-infringing. I would expect such a suit to be coming shortly.
Filed Under: calendar app, likelihood of confusion, the day before, trademark, video games
Companies: fntastic
Comments on “Video Game ‘The Day Before’ Dealing With Trademark Challenge Over A Calendar App”
The game itself is a scam. Plenty of articles about the various red flags demonstrating this.
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/the-day-before-is-definitely-not-a-scam-devs-insist
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Except the only red flag in that article is a mod who isn’t a part of the dev team. That’s scant evidence.
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I chose a single article out of the ‘many’ I mentioned. Perhaps you should do more research on your own.
The game was supposed to come out in a month, and NO GAMEPLAY has been shown at all.
Go check out SkillUp on youtube and see what his sources have said.
Re: Re: Re:
What you’re describing is vaporware, which isn’t a scam. And the dev hasn’t taken any money for it like preorders, so what’s the scam?
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“Plenty of red flags”
Reads article.. Some people make claims the game isn’t real because there’s a delay getting the trademark, mostly based on assumptions about a video and a single Discord comment.
Hmmm… not seeing it. Although, this does illustrate what an insane mess the copyright-devoted world is. The most important thing is trademarking a brand, not the product itself. It often used to be the case that the last thing that was decided on was the title to market under, and release dates were set when the product was basically finished. Now you have to have a solid brand identity and release date before people will even accept you’re working on something. Very sad.
I’m also interested about this part:
“We didn’t take a penny from people: no crowdfunding, no pre-orders, no donations. The game is fully funded by Mytona, one of the largest mobile publishers in the world, who checked the game’s build at every milestone per our contract.”
Erm, so what’s the scam if that’s true? At best, you have money laundering through a single entity who are in on it, but that’s very different to what seems to be implied.
Looks to me to be a typical case of someone claiming to be involved with the company made a comment, and the internet ran with it to an unsupported conclusion. We’ll wait and see what happens with the new release date, but I’m not seeing it so far.
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The ridiculous part is that you can look it up and Fntastic do in fact own the trademark with relation to videogames, so this should not even be an issue.
Mostly it just seems like they took advantage of this to excuse the fact that they don’ actually have a product. The recent “gameplay footage” they showed off with no enemy AI and a bunch of stock assets supposedly 4 years into development attested to that.
Re: Re: Not so
Actually, as I point out in my other post, while Fntastic applied for the trademark, it has not yet been approved, and in fact is currently denied pending more input/a corrected filing.
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A game stuck in dev hell that bad?
Ubisoft also has a project like that: Skulls and Crossbones. Yes, it has trailers and gameplay footage and whatnot.
Still not out yet. Despite the pushing back of their release dates.
Re: That's one elaborate scam!
I read the rockpapershotgun article and, wow, that is one amazing scam Fntstic is putting on! I mean, to go so far as to have another dev make a calendar app with the same name — complete with a trademark filing! — just so you claim a delay in your release so that you can scam people out of … zero dollars!
It must be that 4-dimensional chess I keep hearing about!
From TESS...
OK, I looked up the registration(s) in TESS. Fntastic has a registration pending for The Day Before in the expected game-related categories, filed January 27, 2022. The Trademark office has issued a preliminary denial, dated November 16, based in part on the other registration (below) and in part on deficiencies/errors in Fntastic’s application. Fntastic has 6 months to respond (i.e., by about May 16). Complicating things somewhat is that Fntastic apparently moved/changed owners from New Zealand to Singapore during the time since the original filing.
Someone named Sun Jae Lee from Korea has a registration for The Day Before, applied May 21, 2021, granted November 1, 2022, not only for the categories one would expect for a calendar app, but also a number of newsletter/photo/music related categories that don’t seem connected to a calendar app. The record shows that the initial application was also much broader and vaguer, specifying “Downloadable electronic publications; downloadable music files; downloadable image files; downloadable electronic books; downloadable computer software applications; downloadable computer programmes; downloadable coupon; downloadable ticket; operating system programs; downloadable ring tones for mobile phones; computer application software for mobile phones; computer software applications for mobile phones; computer game software; computer software; computer firmware.” — the USPTO forced them to narrow many of these descriptions.
They thought they had a really smart racket.
1: Get paid by publisher
2: Don’t pay employees
3: ???
4: Profit
Unfortunately at no point did they think “Maybe we ought to also account for how we’re going to make a game”. and had to pull a quick asset flip to push out a clone of Deathly Stillness at the last minute to look like they had anything to speak of.
“The Day Before we started actually working on the game” more like.
But what if the Beatles filed for a trademark on “Treating me like you did, THe Day Before”
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Damn, beat me to a similar quip.
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You should have gotten there “the day before”
Marufs ICT Care
I looked up the registration(s) in TESS. Fntastic has a registration pending for The Day Before in the expected game-related categories, filed January 27, 2022. The Trademark office has issued a preliminary denial, dated November 16, based in part on the other registration (below) and in part on deficiencies/errors in Fantasticks application. Phantastic has 6 months to respond (i.e., by about May 16). Complicating things somewhat is that Phantastic apparently moved/changed owners from New Zealand to Singapore during the time since the original filing.
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