Activision Domain Registration Trademark Warfare
While my favorite title, “Sesame Street Warfare”, was not snatched up by Activision, the publisher did launch a domain registration and trademarking extravaganza claiming ownership to a long list of URLs and titles including “Future Warfare“, “Advanced Warfare“, “Secret Warfare“, and even “Space Warfare” — all of which were trademarked both with and without the “Call of Duty” brand name attached.
The recent barrage could be seen as an all out effort to protect themselves from the newly formed (and EA backed) Respawn Studios. Respawn is the creation of Jason West and Vince Zampella, two former Infinity Ward leads who were escorted out of their offices by Activision hired muscle a few short months ago.
Their exit of course set the wheels in motion for an enormous and well documented legal battle between the two sides. Jason and Vince claiming the publisher made the move as a means to bypass paying out the royalties due to them and the rest of the Infinity Ward staff. Activision justified their actions by citing what they believed to be efforts made by Jason and Vince to undermine the publisher and the franchise.
Considering the continued flow of once Infinity Ward staffers over to Respawn as well as rumors that Activision will be shutting down Infinity Ward for good in the very near future, one really can’t fault the publisher for taking whatever preemptive measures they felt necessary to prepare themselves for what will surely be a closely monitored genre for years to come.
Will Activision and their army of studios come out on top, or will EA’s newly formed Respawn replace Infinity Ward as the king of the First Person Shooter genre? While we’ve yet to see a COD branded Sledgehammer Games created title, we’ve seen what Treyarch is capable of, and with no disrespect to the Acitivision entities, my money is on the former Infinity Ward crew over at Respawn.
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Source: Superannuation
