Well, it looks like Mobigame has had little choice but to change the name of their game to Edgy. My previous post about Mobigame’s Edge being removed apparently was, in fact, Langdell forcing Apple to remove the game again since Langdell felt that the name “Edge by Mobigame” wasn’t enough of a change to distinguish Edge the game from Edge the trademark that Langdell owns.

ChaosEdge has a good write-up about this on their website.

All in all, at least Edge Edgy is back in the AppStore thanks to Apple “approving” the game right away instead of the typical 3 week process. Grandted, there were no changes to the program from the time it was removed to the time it was reinstated, so there shouldn’t have been any vetting to do.

Actually, changing the name of the game would have saved Mobigame a lot of hassle and money, but to be fair, Edge is a great name for the game. Actually, I’m a little worried that “Edgy” isn’t enough of a change for Langdell to be happy. He’s gone after names that were even more different than Edgy is to Edge. Actually, I’m not sure, but I though I read where Langdell actually went after a game called Edgy or Langdell himself has a game named Edgy. … Ah yes, here is where I read that:

Press Releases:

Dispute Between Langdell and Mobigame

On July 15th, Langdell forced iPhone platform-holder Apple’s hand to block the sale of the award winning and triple IGF award nominated iPhone game ‘EDGE’. Langdell’s claim was that the product infringes on his trademark of the word ‘Edge’. Initially, when Mobigame voluntarily removed the game from the store they were receiving several emails per day from Langdell; some of which even went as far as threatening to sue the owner of Mobigame (David Papazian) personally, stating that it could cost David “millions of dollars”.

Mobigame actually own the trademark ‘EDGE’ in France, and the registration is on-going in Europe. Despite this, Langdell threatened to sue unless they remove the game from the AppStore entirely, even in the regions where Mobigame own the trademark. On May 14th, Mobigame proposed renaming the game to ‘EDGY’ for the UK and the US market, stating that their trademarks could co-exist since Mobigame will have the trademark in Europe, and they would rename the game to ‘EDGY’ for the UK & US markets. Langdell refused to accept this, and on May 16th he applied for the trademark ‘EDGY’ in the US.

As a small company, without access to substantial legal resources, Mobigame was keen to avoid a protracted legal dispute, and have tried on many occasions to reach an amicable solution. Unfortunately, negotiation with Langdell proved fruitless. Mobigame is currently evaluating their options, but are denied the income they were depending on from iPhone game sales.

So, Langdell pretty much has said that he wouldn’t accept the name change to Edgy. Now, this was almost 6 months ago, so we’ll have to see if there has been a change of heart on this topic. Somehow, I find it hard to believe that Langdell even has a heart to change, but time will tell.

At any rate, we all hope that Mobigame and Edgy are not finished with Langdell and Mobigame can start truly making money for the fabulous work that they did on the game Edgy. Good luck and lets keep our fingers crossed.