Take-Two Keeps Hazelight From Trademarking It Takes Two

Take-Two Inter­ac­tive has thrown a trade­mark claim at Haze­light Stu­dio over It Takes Two.

The trade­mark claim was filed to the Unit­ed States Patent and Trade­mark Office by Take-Two short­ly after the release of the puz­zle game. This has forced Haze­light to aban­don for­mal reg­is­tra­tion of the game’s name.

In a state­ment sent to Eurogamer, a Haze­light spokesper­son said the com­pa­ny “can­not com­ment on ongo­ing dis­putes,” but are “hope­ful it will be resolved.” It appears the stu­dio did not dis­pute the trade­mark claim, as a notice of aban­don­ment was sent to the USPTO.

Busi­ness ana­lyst Mike Fut­ter com­ment­ed on the sit­u­a­tion on Twit­ter, say­ing that although Haze­light has lost own­er­ship of the game’s name, it does­n’t mean the stu­dio will have to change the name of the game. “They could change it if they want to pro­tect the name, but hon­est­ly, it’s prob­a­bly not worth it to them to do that,” Fut­ter said.

David Gur­win, the chair of the Enter­tain­ment, Media and Sports Law Group at Buchanon Inger­soll & Rooney, states that Haze­light still has “com­mon law rights.” This just means the stu­dio can con­tin­ue to sell the game and use the It Take Two name based on usage, rather than for­mal reg­is­tra­tion. How­ev­er, as Fut­ter point­ed out, this is more lim­it­ed than just hav­ing the trademark.

Richard Hoeg com­ment­ed on the trade­mark claim, say­ing “Take-Two is being very, very aggres­sive”, and has filed “exten­sion requests for 25 chal­lenges in the last three months.”

Take-Two Inter­ac­tive has pre­vi­ous­ly filed hun­dreds of trade­mark dis­putes with the USPTO, for words like “rock­star”, “mafia”, “social club”, and oth­er words relat­ed to its IPs.