New name for Godshard
Hello, everyone. So it turns out the name Godshard is trademarked in the US and I've been forced to take the game down from all platforms. I always check if my games are already being used, but I didn't think of checking the trademark, so this is ultimately my own fault. There's a chance I'll have to give back all the money I made from the sales via Amazon, which would really suck because that's where most of my sales come from, but it is what it is.
Since I still want the game to be available, though, I need a new name for it. I spent the whole night thinking of names, and ended up with a list of ten. From those ten, these two are the best ones, in my opinion. So what do you guys think? Which one do you like better? Do you have a better idea?
Comments (7)
Michael just told me that Tides of Ruin is the name of an expansion for a boardgame, so I guess that means the new name is Broken Shores, haha. It seemed to be the most popular, too.
Trademarks are a weird part of IP law (<s>as opposed to the rest of IP law</s>). A trademark is specific to a market segment and all about confusion. You can legally sell a "Godshard" car model with no issues. But books and computer games are a close market to TTRPGs. It's a bit wider with slogans and the look of logos due to brand association, but still market based. The main weird thing is that trademarks force proactive legal notices. You can ignore your patent and let A, B and C do what they want with it, then stop D from using it. The moment somebody uses your trademark and you don't start proceeding to stop them, you give up all rights to the trademark. IANAL, but did take an engineering law course, way back in undergrad - mostly focused on tort and contract law for the civil engineers - and work for the licensing arm of my University one summer.
Yeah I checked and this person has registered "Godshard" in a few fields, as well as combinations of the name with other words. They're really covering their tracks, apparently they're making a JRPG... But I guess they plan to release books and other similar media. It's a mess so I just want to minimize the damage as much as possible (I'm already losing sales cause I've been asked where did the game go by a few people already), and move on.
if you add a divine fish to the bestiary, you could call it Codshard and do only minimal changes. Or tweak it slightly to Codshark. Seriously, I like Tides of Ruin. And I'd dike to throw the long and wordy "Sea of Shattered Gods" into the ring.
Now I must write a Codshard companion book, a biology book of sorts, haha. Thanks for the name suggestion but at this point I feel like the TM owner has their eyes on me and I'm extremely paranoid, I don't want anything with God in the name. I know it's probably silly but this is a very stressful thing (first time ever to happen to me) and I just want to get over it as clean as possible.
Shores of Ruin, kinda in that same vein.
I actually thought about that one as well, haha. I still prefer the two options I share here with you guys. I think that the first option, thematically speaking, would actually be Tides of Ruin, because it focuses completely on the "water" theme.