The story of Tim Langdell's relentless and darkly fascinating trademark fight against any and all users of the name 'Edge' has been quietly storming under the surface for the better part of this year.
In a nutshell: Langdell's Edge Games, a UK-based publisher in the earliest days of home computer games, has tirelessly struggled to maintain ownership over the word against any would-be competitor, regardless of discipline, growing more convoluted and ludicrous the farther down the rabbit hole you go (the Chaos Edge blog is the most damning at documenting just how bizarre it's become).
For nearly two decades, it seemed to work. Edge Games successfully struck settlements with movie and comic book companies, further strengthening his grip on the four-letter word, but then Langdell attempted to swat down what should have been his easiest target: tiny French indie developer Mobigame, and their iPhone debut, titled, of course, Edge (pictured left).
After successfully managing to get the game removed from the App Store, Langdell butted up against what could prove to be his downfall: the collective, unshakable 'might' of the indie game community, who've coalesced around the Mobigame struggle and mounted reams of evidence and circumstantial quotes about Langdell's business practices in his early days, seeking to shred the paper tiger and expose what little claim Edge Games has over the trademark.
Now with the legal might of no less than Electronic Arts behind them (who recently filed this scathing suit against Edge Games after Langdell seemed to be targeting EA's Mirror's Edge, using much of the evidence gathered by the indies), and with Edge Games now having successfully convinced Apple to remove Killer Edge Racing from the App Store, the indie community has served its latest sardonic volley against Langdell, rallying together to show support for 'the fallen' by incorporating the name into their own games.
Below, then, a gallery of all the participants' parodies. Whether the 'troll day' has any effect other than situation-awareness and to what end the community will take its efforts remains to be seen, but either way it's a heartening reminder of the size and solidarity of the indie games movement.
Derek Yu modifies his Spelunky with its new name, and a pixel-caricature of Edge Games' owner.
Steph Thirion's iPhone debut Eliss gains an added dimension to give the game more, well, edges.
Effing Hail designer Greg Wohlwend and Closure creator Tyler Glaiel introduce their latest work and company name.
Recently featured Toronto dev Capybara announce a title switch for their game previously known as Critter Crunch.
Also recently featured Canabalt creator Adam Saltsman unveils the largest of the efforts: a new website for Atomic Edge Games, pitch perfectly capturing the spirit of Langdell's amateur site-development skills, and following suit by renaming his games and using, as does Langdell, assets from pre-existing works to promote them.
Austria's Broken Rules (now to be known as Broken Edge) converts their PC/soon-to-be WiiWare game And Yet It Moves to its new name.
Mike Kasprzak modifies his iPhone debut game Smiles down to the level of each mode.
Art game master Messhof announces his latest work.
Dejobaan take their already unlikely named game AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! -- A Reckless Disregard for Gravity to new heights.
And finally, Fez creators Polytron unveil their decision to re-introduce their game as Fedge.
To learn more about the Edge Games vs. The World efforts, visit the Chaos Edge blog, TIGSource's roundup of the ongoing story, and Simon Parkin's Eurogamer feature laying out just how this all began.
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Kudos to the indie studios trying to "stick it to the man" as it were. I hope they succeed. This reminds me of other sue happy companies (Hansen Beverage, and Monster Cable) who seem willing to sue the pants off anyone who can't put up the same legal muscle. I hate people who abuse the system like this.
Wow, this guy sounds like a cretin.
Disgusting malevolent leech would certainly express it even better. You might even add "scum" on top of it, since this guy belongs to a certain group of people society would be better off without.
Btw, Rockpapershotgun mentioned it as well: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/11/12/going-over-the-edge-indie-mass-protest/
Wedge politics at its finest!
Not to be left out... http://www.lazy8studios.com/2009/edge_of_dimensionality
The funny thing about trademark law is, the more he defends his trademark the less it becomes a generic word. The less it becomes a generic word, the more of a case he has for future defenses. And so on.
What an incredible douche! Patent and Trademark Trolls are just a few steps away from politicians on my despise-o-meter.
I wonder if he's sued U2's The Edge yet.
Let's also not forget the purpose of trademark law. Unlike copyright, it's not a matter of "I thought of it, so I get to use it however I want," but rather, it's a consumer protection: "We don't want poor people being duped into thinking they bought an Apple iPhone when they really bought a substandard clone, so we'll sue people who try to be sneaky."
I can't imagine anybody who bought Mirror's Edge did so because they thought it was made by Edge Games. In fact, I doubt many people even knew who Edge Games was until this whole fiasco started -- indeed, the name has now become popular enough that it might require trademark protection. But it certainly didn't need protection before -- it had no products to be confused with and no reputation to lean on.
If you want a great example, look for a company named Paragon Manufacturing. Or distribution. Or lawn care. Yes, that's right, there are dozens, perhaps hundreds of companies whose name is Paragon. It certainly doesn't cause trademark issues.
Langdell's only weapon is the inability for most indies to put up with a court battle. Even if Langdell couldn't bring it to court, the very threat would cause many people to settle (see the RIAA/MPAA lawsuits).
I hope EA has a hey-day with him. Anybody willing to abuse the system deserves to feel its wraith come back on them.
Sometimes I wish we all lived in Russia, where vodka and contract killings are at bargain prices.
This guy seriously deserves to die.
It is issues like this why I think the trademark system is a joke.
There's a little tiff going on right now about Google's Go language. Seems a Mr. McCabe wrote an obscure little language called Go! many years ago, and has entered bug report #9 against the language, asking Google to rename the language. Many people have rallied behind him -- if not for the sake of his claim, for the amusement at Google not Googling the language name -- and have asked Google to change the name to "Issue 9".
This makes me so fucking happy.
>quietly storming under the surface for the better part of this year.
err, no, it rose to the surface after simon parkers edge of reason article at eurogamer http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/the-edge-of-reason at the start of august, every blog covered it, and he was off the igda board by the end of the month.
I like how if you look at the web site for the "Edge Racers" game (soon to be released in September), at about 7 seconds in to the video you see a logo that is an obvious rip off of IBM.
http://www.edge-racers.com/
Or the what happens when you hit the "games" button the the Edge website: you get a non copy and pasteable list of various games for the Commodore 64 and "ZX Spectrum".
Or this, supposedly from an old wikipedia page: "prior to entering the nascent game industry, Langdell had two quite different careers: first as an astrophysicist and then as a clinical psychologist where he used his training as a physical scientist to do some of the first computer-based research into Autism using eye tracking and face perception techniques."
Apparently he is faculty at some online university, that looks to be about as reputable as he is:
http://tr.im/ERGs
Or this, from a description of the game Mythora: "Mythora is an older product in our range, launched in 2004. It does not currently have up to date video or sound card drivers and thus may not work on all current PC systems."
Who the hell ever heard of a game containing drivers in the first place?
And, if Mythora is "an older product in [their] range," published in 2004, doesn't that pretty much demolish their 30 year old software company claim? ;)
I'm not a big law and order type, but there is a name for this: criminal fraud, and he's asking and deserving of about five years in federal prison.
I have very little sympathy for those who use the threat of government power to harass and intimidate others.
Edge of Curling: http://col000r.blogspot.com/2009/11/edge-of-curling.html
this article interests me largely because I work for one of the many companies called 'edge', a large propoortion of which probably pre-date him. I'm quite certain the word on its own is too common in australia to maintain a trademark, so we should be safe
but we do have huge letters spelling out 'edge' on the building, the company website, the foyer, all our cars, and hundreds of thousands of business cards. I'm sure he can find us if he wants to
The more you try to bury something, the more people are going to want to talk about it... Gotta hand it to those edgy indies!
@ #15 zyodei
National University appears to be a legitimate university. At the very least, they have quite a few physical campuses scattered around California.
As much as I like Spelunky, I've heard Yu is in talks wih Microsoft to make an XBLA version. I know he'd have to be stupid to throw that back in their face but MS is one of the vanguards of the wrong side of the "copyfight" war.
What we need next is a Flash-based web game: Lawyer's Edge, a basic 'interactive documentary' in which you play Tim Langdell, start off with a piddling bit of cash, and utilize a toolkit of different legal strategies to coerce a small fortune out of so-call trademark infringers as they use the word 'edge' throughout the years.
'and have asked Google to change the name to "Issue 9".'
After the Plan 9 port?
Edge Games seem to be developing a game called "mirrors" maybe they are gonna go after mirror's edge after all. I mean cmon. Mirrors! by Edge games, thats close enoug for a lawsuit right? hahahahaha
Not only are us indies ragging against Langdell, but us devs in the Boston community (especially the IGDA members) are taking a stance against him.