PUBLIC STATEMENT REGARDING
MOBIGAME AND ITS iTUNES GAME

(Visit our FORUM for discussion)

Update 8/30/09: The latest false rumor spreading seems to be either that Edge Games does not have a valid contract for its game "Mythora" (aka "Banita"), or that the contract was not with Edge but instead in the personal name of Edge's CEO Dr Tim Langdell. Both rumors are groundless, untrue and said only to defame. Here are the opening lines of the contract and the signature lines; the contract is still in full force and effect with Edge Games owning all rights to "Mythora"/"Banita" for historic versions and for all sequels and spinoffs:

Update 8/17/09: Escapist Magazine does first fair and balanced review of the issues; critical of Mobigames and other game press and finds Edge/Langdell generally acted well, did only what the law required be done, and did not deserve the vilifications of recent weeks. Also determines Mobigame knew it was doing wrong and went ahead anyway against legal advice to the contrary, seeking instead to unfairly stir up public opinion against Langdell/Edge.

Open Letter To Mobigame:

Dear David,

Now that Apple Inc. has reached its independant conclusion to remove your game bearing the name "Edge" from the US, UK and German iTunes stores due to our registered trademark rights in EDGE and THE EDGE, insofar as there is any dispute left between our two companies we publicly invite you to resolve that dispute solely through the usual channels of the trademark registries or the courts. We condem your decision to sink so low as to attack the CEO of our company, Dr. Tim Langdell, personally, and to attack the IGDA, and ask that you cease this smear campaign based on falsehoods and deliberate misrepresentation of historic events, and cease encouraging others to do the same, before further harm is caused to the IGDA. Please be assured, no matter how much you embarass this company or its CEO in public, we cannot and will not give in to your unreasonable demands that we give up all rights in the trademark EDGE and effectively hand such rights over to you -- which is what you have asked of us at all times since late May and repeated in your most recent letter to us via the London solicitors, Sheridans. Indeed, as you know, we cannot give in to your demands since to do so would put us in breach of several license and other trading agreements we have that compel us to protect the EDGE and THE EDGE trademarks. Your refusal to change the name of your game, even to EDGY which we gave our blessing for you to do over two months ago, and your continued insistance you must be permitted to call the game "Edge" regardless of our more than 25 years of common law rights and well over a decade of current, valid, registered rights, is unreasonable.

PUBLIC STATEMENT

(Update 8/11/09: Predictably, perhaps, Mobigame's supporters have already started rumors on the Internet that the documents in this statement are either false or doctored. That is not true, they are all completely genuine and we can prove they are. The only alterations are the obvious ones - redaction of the individuals at Edge since Mobigame seems intent on perpetuating defamation against Edge employees as individuals rather than employees -- and do not alter meaning. There is also obvious addition of boldening in red and obvious Edge comments in blue. We can also prove the phone calls with David Papazian referenced below did take place. In answer to some questions raised: yes Mythora and Racers were both developed by external indie development groups (we never claimed otherwise) and yes we believe in both cases deals were crafted with other publishers before the agreement with Edge was reached. The images of Racers are new to our website, we did not mean to imply they had never been published on the Internet before. Mythora (I) was also known as Mythora:Banita. Mythora II is a different, new game. Last, you will see while we suggested Mobigame pay us 25% of its historic earnings for their game, we never demanded it -- as some continue to falsely state -- we only suggested it because we were invited to do so by Papazian. Also, we withdrew that suggestion a few hours later confirming we were asking for no money at all if Mobigame would change the name of their game.)

(update 8/13/09: The bias and trend toward defamation in reporting continues with Kotaku adding the fact of the Fuzzyeye's statement to their piece wrongly accusing Dr Langdell in"Trademark Troll Is At It Again" but failing to alter their defamatory article -- or its title -- despite proof they were wrong. And then in the reader comments to their article "Tim Langdell Defends Himself in Open Letter to Mobigame" Kotaku just removed most of the positive comments that were being made about Edge/Langdell, leaving almost solely only the ones critical of Edge/ Langdell. The removed comments -- from posters such as "SuperD" -- were accused by other posters as being by Dr Langdell. That is not true, neither Dr Langdell nor any other Edge employee made those comments, but it is noteworthy Kotaku still so wishes to slant all news on this issue against Edge that it removed all these positive comments from third parties entirely unrelated to Edge who had an equal right to have their voice heard. We condemn this blatent bias and trust it will stop. We would welcome contact from the person who posted as "SuperD".) (8/14/09: while hidden from those reading the main article even when you click on the link to see all comments, you can see the more balanced range of comments, including those of SuperD and others, here.)

The following documents show:

• Edge never demanded money from Mobigame
• Mobigame proposed Edge give it money to use the mark "Edge"
• Edge has never acted as "trademark trolls"
• Edge acted well in the "EDGY" matter
• Mobigame has only pretended to want to change the name of its game
  
• Mobigame has persistently demanded Edge give up its rights to the mark "Edge"
• Mobigame has lied so as to defame Edge and its CEO Tim Langdell
• Mobigame deliberately selected EDGE as the name of its game in 2008
• How many games we have produced in the past 5 years
• Insight into the "Mirrors (by) Edge" matter
• Details of our game credits system
• "Edge of Twilight"
• False accusations against Edge

Key documents: (a) Mobigame's Attorney's Letter, (b) Mobigame's proposal rejecting using EDGY, insisting Mobigame be permitted to use the name EDGE, and requiring Edge Games to pay Mobigame money to use its own trademark.

1. Mobigame claims it is partnered with Electronic Arts.

On May 15, 2009 we received the following email from David Papazian of Mobigame claiming Mobigame had just acquired a new partner, Electronic Arts. If true, then we suspect most supporters of Mobigame are unaware of this partnership. If not true, then you may wish to consider whether this suggests David does not always tell the truth:

Note: In fact, Mobigame has not "[had] the trademark EDGE in Europe since the 11th of July 2008." What David is referring to above is that he registered the mark EDGE in France in July 2008 and then later in the year filed to register the mark EDGE for the whole of Europe (a "Communitry Trademark") and that application is currently disputed by this corportation and will not mature to full registration because our rights in the UK and Germany take priority).

2. Edge not "trademark trolls";
Edge never demanded money from Mobigame;
Dr. Langdell innocent of allegations made

We have never at any time engaged in what some people are calling "trademark trolling" whereby a company waits until some unspecting company uses its registered trademark and then demands money from that company to license the use of the registered trademark.

Like any owner of registered trademark rights, Edge Games is obliged to protect and enforce those rights or Edge runs the very real risk of losing its trademark registration. The normal, acceptable business practice is for the owner of the registered trademark to write a "Cease and Desist" letter to the company using its registered mark. Such letters, in order to be valid, indicate what trademark rights are owned by the company, what use by the other company is being objected to, and some indication that the registered rights owner will take legal action if necessary should the offending party not cease the infringing use. Looking at the history of our company and the history its predecessors in the rights in EDGE/THE EDGE and our family of EDGE marks, we have only ever sued one company over a trademark dispute (well over a decade ago) and that law suit ended in an amicable resolution. Yes, we have taken around 20 or so trademark actions before trademark tribunals, but that is a very small number compared to other companies who are also actively protecting their registered trademarks. To twist the facts and suggest these several trademark actions were "lawsuits" or that they show Edge Games to be "litigious" is both absurd and a deliberate attempt to defame this corporation and its CEO, Dr Langdell.

We have never demanded money from anyone in return for our not suing them, that is a complete falsehood. We have pointed out the damages a trademark owner might justifiably claim if the infringement does not cease (which is usual business practice and not "trademark trolling") and in some cases we have made proposals for license agreements that might involve our receiving a license fee payment but never as part of the bullying tactics we are accused of, only as part of amicable settlement discussions.

Since Mobigame have widely quoted from the Cease and Desist letter we sent them, here is the body of that communication that was sent by email and Federal Express so that you can see it followed normal guidelines for such a letter that companies are required to send to other companies if they are not to lose their registered trademark rights:

We have been criticized for how strongly we worded the warning to Mobigame in this letter, but to put the communication in context we had been trying to contact Mobigame for some time with no success and believed them to be deliberately avoiding contact with us. That is why the letter was as strongly worded as it was.

Note we did not demand money of Mobigame, we only warned them of the level of seriousness of what they were doing.

While we received a "read receipt" to our email to contact.web@mobigame.net on the day we sent the above letter by email, we never received a reply. Further, even though we sent the letter by Federal Express to every address we could find for Mobigame, all the Federal Express packages were returned to us as rejected which further fueled our suspicion Mobigame were avoiding us.

Almost a month later on March 31, 2009, Mobigame had still not responded to our repeated requests that they reply to us. On March 31, then, we wrote to Apple Inc and brought to their attention that Mobigame's game was infringing our registered rights in the US, UK and Germany, and our common law rights elsewhere worldwide.

Only after we complained to Apple on 3/31 did Mobigame finally write us for the very first time as follows:

> Apple Inc. sent me a notice written by your company about our game Edge.
>
> We will answer within 7 days, this time is needed to study your 
> request and send a copy to iTunes Music Marketing & IP Legal team.
>
> Best regards,
>
> David Papazian

-----------------

We then exchanged correspondence with a Paris attorney acting for Mobigame who told us that if we could show her proof of our US, UK and German trademarks she would consider advising her client to accordingly. We sent that proof to the attorney and got the following response directly from David Papazian instead:

As you can see in his April 22 email, David asked us to tell him what we thought a good solution could look like (and remember that when we wrote this response at this point Mobigame had not told us that it had a registration for the mark EDGE in France or that it had applied to register the mark EDGE as a CTM registration in Europe):

However, after writing the above we revisited what we had written for Option 1, and decided to write the following email to Mobigame amending our suggestions for settlement (we note the above email has been quoted from but no one mentions we retracted the part that people found offensive):

----- Original Message -----
From:
To: David Papazian
Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2009 3:27 PM
Subject: Re: iPhone

Without Prejudice to our rights, for settlement purposes only.

Dear David,

Further to our prior email, upon reflection we do not feel asking you to pay us 25% of your royalties to-date under Option 1 was in keeping with our representation that we wish to foster new creative talent in the independent game industry. Thus please ignore that part of Option 1 :if you chose Option 1 it would be with no payment to us at all.

Sincerely,

Without prejudice -- All Rights and Remedies in Law Reserved.

------------

To this day Mobigame has not responded to these suggestions. Instead, commencing in mid-May, Mobigame started demanding that we either give our permission to their using the name EDGE for their game everywhere (including the US and UK) or that we confirm our agreement to abandon any claim to the mark EDGE for games anywhere (including in the US and UK) and confirm Mobigame has the sole right to the mark (As you will see below, Mobigame alternate as to which demand they make on us to this day).

ON APRIL 28, 2009 MOBIGAME'S PARIS ATTORNEY WROTE US (Mobigame letter) INDICATING IN RESPONSE TO OUR HAVING SUPPLIED PROOF OF OUR REGISTERED RIGHTS IN EDGE/THE EDGE MOBIGAME HAD REMOVED THEIR GAME FROM THE US AND UK iTUNES STORES. NOTE THE ATTORNEY STATES SHE CONSIDERS HER FILES NOW CLOSED AND CLEARLY THOUGHT THIS WAS THE END OF THE MATTER (WITH MOBIGAME CHANGING THE NAME OF THEIR GAME AND PUTTING IT BACK UP ON iTUNES WITH THE NEW NAME).
(8/13/09: Some have asked why the Mobigame attorney's letter is not in a European size format. The letter was received by Edge's facsimile machine which printed it out on US Letter paper thus our 'original' is in US format. That fax was then scanned, converted to pdf and the highlight arrow added).

3. The "EDGY" issue:

On May 14, 2009 David Papazian telephoned us and proposed that Mobigame change the name of their game to EDGY in the US and UK. They confirmed this idea in an email.

At first we were opposed to the idea since we felt "EDGY" was too similar to EDGE, and so we wrote the following (an email that several people have misleadingly quoted from out of context):

Upon receipt of the above email David Papazian telephoned us again and convinced us that adopting EDGY as the name of their game would be an acceptable solution for at least the US and UK territories since he confirmed he agreed that in the US we would register EDGY in our name and license the use of it to Mobigame at no charge. We thus we wrote the following confirming what we understood was a mutually agreed settlement for at least the US and UK territories:

----- Original Message -----
From:
To: David Papazian
Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2009 4:28 PM
Subject: Re: iPhone - Illegal use of mark "EDGE"

Without Prejudice to our rights, for settlement purposes only.

David,

Thank for you calling again. Given you agreed in our call earlier that for the US territory where dilution on the trademark register is of key concern to us (there being no dilution on the UK register) we will register the mark EDGY in our company name and license it to you free of charge with you registering EDGY in your company name in the UK, I believe we have a deal for at least the US and UK territories. We will go ahead and file to register EDGY in the US and you should go ahead and change the name of your game to EDGY for these territories. We will not oppose your re-listing the game in the US and UK iTunes stores with this name. Again, you will pay us nothing for this settlement since we want to see your game on sale again as soon as possible with a name other than EDGE and are committed to this being a zero-dollar settlement for your company to promote its growth.

------------------

As a result of this oral agreement with Mobigame on May 14 we filed to register the mark EDGY fully expecting Mobigame to change the name of its game to EDGY immediately and put the game back up on iTunes in the US and UK with this new name.

The next day on May 15 Mobigame informed us they had a new partner -- Electronic Arts. And from that moment on the settlement we believed we had arrived at for them to change the name of their game to EDGY disappeared, with Mobigame instead now insisting it owned the mark EDGE in the US and Europe and that it refused to change the name of its game from EDGE to any other name at all.

On May 18 David Papazian told us for the first time that he had filed to register the mark EDGE in both the US and Europe, and claimed he owned the mark EDGE (not us):

THUS IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING DAVID'S CONFIRMATION THAT AS OF MAY 15 MOBIGAME IS NOW PARTNERED WITH ELECTRONIC ARTS THE IDEA OF THEIR CHANGING THE NAME OF THEIR GAME TO EDGY IN ANY TERRITORY IS PUT ASIDE AND REPLACED WITH MOBIGAME INSISTING THEY OWN THE TRADEMARK EDGE AND ASKING US TO PROVE OUR USE IN THE US IN THE PAST 5 YEARS (for purposes of challenging that we really own the trademark rights in the US).

On May 25 Mobigame wrote confirming they had reneged on the deal to change the name of their game to EDGY in the US and UK.

Instead David Papazian insisted that if we wanted him to change name of his game to EDGY in the US then we had to stop using the mark EDGE in Europe including in the UK (where he claimed his company owned the rights). He confirms in this email that since we had not agreed these (outrageous) terms he had canceled the agreement of them to change the name of their game to EDGY even in the US (our emphasis in red):

Note David claims Mobigame has the international trademark EDGE for class 9 (videogames) in Europe and in the United States. This was not true: Mobigame applied to register the mark EDGE in the US and on June 4, 2009 that application was given a final rejection as unacceptable (Mobigame's US application refused). Mobigame also do not own the mark EDGE in Europe since their application for it there is being opposed by us and will be successfull stopped since we have priority of rights in the UK and German. We also never claimed "worldwide" rights -- at all times we made clear that we had registered rights in the US, UK and Germany and common law and other rights in other countries worldwide. Not the same as claiming registered rights worldwide as Mobigame have claimed we said.

Then on May 27, 2009 Mobigame sent us the following settlement proposal in which they required us to PAY THEM 5% OF OUR INCOME FROM USING OUR OWN TRADEMARK EDGE AND SAY THEY WILL NOT LET US USE THE MARK EDGE IN EUROPE UNLESS WE AGREE TO LET THEM USE THE MARK EDGE IN THE US (update 8/12/09: some have written to us saying it is unfair for us to portray this as a demand, and while we have other evidence not included here that proves it did rise to the level of a demand, we have altered this wording in the interest of painting as clear and unbiased picture of Mobigame's behavior as possible. Unlike Mobigame, we are not trying to defame, just get accurate details before the public so that fair unbiased opinions can be formed)(8/13/09: note, this was just a change to our comments here, not to any document as some are starting to allege).

(note, we had just admonished David for not telling us about his US and European applications to register the mark EDGE in his company's name until we had been negotiating for over a month - hence the way he opens the following email. Note, too, all suggestion that Mobigame are willing to change the name of their game to EDGY has disappeared, even for the US market):

Here is the attached proposal Mobigame sent with the above mail (which as you can see demands we pay them 5% of our revenue in return for being permitted to use our own mark EDGE in Europe): MobigameMay27Proposal
(Update 8/13/09: Some have questioned the authorship of this pdf noting it was saved in US Letter format and asked that we post the original Word doc that Papazian sent which as you can see is in EU "A4" format: OriginalPapazianProposalDoc. As you can see, the idea of changing the game's name to EDGY has completely disappeared and been replaced with a requirement that we agree they can use EDGE worldwide and that we should pay them to use our own trademark).

We responded as follows:

To which David responded repeating his oral threat that "we would regret it" if we didnt accept his proposal to pay him to use our own mark EDGE and agree that Mobigame is the true owner of the trademark EDGE, not Edge Games:

THE MOMENT THIS DEADLINE DAVID SET FOR US RAN OUT (WHEREUPON MOBIGAME SAID WE WOULD "REGRET IT" IF WE DID NOT ACCEPT THEIR OFFER), THE HIGHLY DEFAMATORY ARTICLE BY SIMON CARLESS APPEARED ON GAMASUTRA STARTING THE SMEAR CAMPAIGN AGAINST THIS COMPANY AND DR. LANGDELL PERSONALLY, IN PARTICULAR. We thus wrote to Mobigame expressing our disgust that they would sink to such levels and we made a new proposal which once again included their changing the name of their game to EDGY and not paying us anything:

MOBIGAME NEVER RESPONDED TO THIS EMAIL AND THEN SUDDENLY WITHOUT WARNING ON OR ABOUT JUNE 18, 2009 THEY PUT THEIR GAME BACK UP ON iTUNES USING THE NAME "EDGE". AT ALL TIMES SINCE MAY 15 WHEN THEY ANNOUNCED THEY WERE NOW PARTNERED WITH ELECTRONIC ARTS, MOBIGAME HAVE REPEATEDLY REJECTED THE IDEA THAT THEY CHANGE THE NAME OF THEIR GAME TO EDGY AND INSTEAD MAINTAINED THEY OWN THE MARK EDGE AND WE MUST AGREE TO ABANDON OUR RIGHT TO USE THE MARK EDGE.

Publicly Mobigame have repeatedly lied and told the fiction that they wanted to change the game's name to EDGY but that we had stopped them by filing to register EDGY in the US. Clearly you can see from the above that this was not true.

ON JULY 14, 2009 APPLE INC COMPLETED ITS OWN INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION AND AS A RESULT TOOK DOWN MOBIGAME'S GAME FROM THE US, UK AND GERMAN iTUNES STORES.

ON JULY 28 HAVING NOT HEARD FROM MOBIGAME IN ALMOST TWO MONTHS WE WROTE THE FOLLOWING:

WITHOUT PREJUDICE SAVE AS TO COSTS

Mr Papazian,

Since you have sought to turn the dispute between our two companies into a personal attack on Dr. Langdell, he will no longer be the person communicating with you on this matter on behalf of Edge

In early June we sent you a settlement proposal involving your changing the name of your game to EDGY which would have you paying no money to us at all. Under that proposal Mobigame would take ownership of the EDGY trademark application, and there would be no license from Edge to Mobigame. You would own the EDGY trademark entirely.

We did not receive a reply to that proposal and inquire again what your response to it is. We remain keen to find a settlement both parties can agree upon so that your game can once again go up on the US, UK and German iTunes stores.

We reserve all or rights in this matter, and note this communication is sent under banner of "without prejudice" which means it cannot be used in any legal proceeding and should not be revealed to any third party, the press, or etc. The fact it is "save as to costs" means that should this matter ever go to court, and we trust it will not need to, then you will be liable to pay our legal costs if the basis on which we finally settle or the court's order is the same or less favorable to you than the settlement offer made to you.

Sincerely,

Edge Games, Inc.

-------------------

In response to this we received a letter from London Solicitors ("Sheridans") stating they now act on behalf of Mobigame, rejecting our offer that Mobigame change the name of their game to EDGY but bizarrely insisting we either abandon our application for the mark EDGY in the US or assign the application to Mobigame. As you can also see, Sheridans on behalf of Mobigame also demanded we abandon our claim to rights in the mark EDGE in the US and threatened to sue us. Here is a quote from the letter we received from Sheridans dated 29 July 2009:

"In order to settle this matter our client [Mobigame] requires from you full and unequivocal undertaking that
you will abandon your United States trade mark application for the word Edge and agree not to assert that
trade mark or any other registered (or unregistered) trade mark involving the word "EDGE" against our client
now or at any time in future. We further require your undertaking that you will not interfere in any way with
our client's exploitation on its Game on any platform.

In the event that you do not undertake as required by this letter our client shall be entitled to commence
proceedings against you as described in this letter. You should also be aware that in the English courts
our client shall be entitled to an award for its costs."

After consultation with our attornies, since we only applied to register EDGY as part of the May 14 agreement we thought we had arrived at with David Papazian, WE ABANDONED OUR APPLICATION FOR EDGY IN THE US ON AUGUST 3, 2009 - the filing was processed August 4: EDGY application abandoned

We also wrote to Mobigame's solicitors Sheridans on August 3, 2009 indicating we had just submitted the abandonment of our application for EDGY, and repeating that their client is free to use that mark to change the name of their game to in the US, UK and Germany.

TO DATE SHERIDANS HAS NOT REPLIED AND MOBIGAME HAS DONE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT CHANGING THE NAME OF THEIR GAME TO EDGY OR ANY OTHER NAME SO THAT THEY CAN GET THE GAME ON SALE AGAIN ON iTUNES IN THE US, UK OR GERMANY.

There could be no greater proof than this that Mobigame lied when they said Edge Games had held them up changing the name of their game to EDGY; Mobigame only said this to make Edge Games look bad -- and to make our CEO personally look bad, too -- and to try to falsely blame us for Mobigame's lost revenues so as to deceive the independent game community into taking pity on Mobigame and siding with Mobigame against Edge Games and Dr Lagndell personally.

4. Edge did not 'force' Apple to take down Mobigame's game

The other lie Mobigame have perpetuated is that Apple were forced by us to take down Mobigame's game. The first time the game was down for around 6 weeks was entirely Mobigame's voluntary decision based on being shown proof of our trademark registrations in EDGE and THE EDGE. The second and final time the game was taken down in the US, UK and Germany was as a result of Apple undertaking its own independent investigation and noting our registered rights in these territories. Apple have made clear that neither Mobigame or Edge Games influenced their decision.

5. Mobigame deliberately chose "Edge" as the name
knowing it was Edge Games' trademark

Mobigame at first suggested it was an innocent party that had quite unintentionally selected the name "Edge" for its iPhone game. Mobigame even claimed that before Edge Games wrote its Cease and Desist letter in March 2009 it had "never heard of Edge Games or its game Bobby Bearing." This has all since been shown to be untrue with David Papazian confirming both directly to us, to the press, and to colleagues on the Internet, that prior to selecting the name "Edge" for his game he considered the name "Cube" but decided against that because he heard there was another game being produced by that name. He has admitted he then researched the trademark registries (at least in the US and UK) and found that Edge Games owned the trademark THE EDGE for videogames, and had the trademark EDGE in process to be registered for videogames, but as at the moment he was making his decision the mark EDGE had only matured to the US and UK registers for printed matter relating to videogames and not for videogames themselves. Anyone knowledgable in trademark law, or anyone who had sought to advice of an attorney/solicitor, would have known that (a) there is no difference in trademark law between THE EDGE and EDGE since the word "THE" is ignored when comparing trademarks, and (b) the fact that another company has an application for a mark that has not quite matured yet based on use of the mark since 1984, does not mean it is all right to use that mark just because the actual registration has yet to happen. Yet this is what David claims he did -- he knowingly decided to go ahead with the name "Edge" will full knowledge that THE EDGE was Edge Games' registered trademark for videogames, and that Edge Games was about to receive a registration for the mark EDGE too for games.

Mobigame was not "innocent" in this matter as some say, and there is no justication for saying that they made an honest mistake. They made a very deliberate decision to use a name that they knew was someone else's trademark. And inasmuch as they made a willful decision to use the name EDGE when they first launched their game on iTunes, they definitely made a willfull and clearly foolhardy decision to use the name EDGE yet again when they put their game back up on iTunes in June after they had voluntarily taken it down for around 6 weeks.

6. Our games in the last five years

We have produced a number of games in the last five years, including Mythora (2004), BattlePods (2005, 2006), Pengu (2006, 2007), and Bobby Bearing (various versions for PC, Java, Brew, and other platforms launched annually since 2004, the most recent version being 2009). Bobby Bearing in particular has been one of the most consistent selling games on mobile platforms over the past five years (which is why we suspect Mobigame chose this game to base their game on).

Our game RACERS (RACERS screenshots ) is about to be launched on PC and PS3, with the other versions following. Mirrors will also be launched soon, as will the iPhone versions of Bobby Bearing Remix and Firebirds Remix. Mythora 2 is currently delayed.

7. Our game "Mirrors" and "Mirror's Edge"

Because it has been revealed in the press (and we thus presume revealed by Electronic Arts telling people since we have never previously made this public), we can confirm that we have been in a trademark dispute with Electronic Arts over their use of the mark EDGE in the form Mirror's Edge since 2007. When EA first announced they intended to develop an original IP game and call it by this name we wrote a friendly letter to EA informing them of our rights in EDGE, THE EDGE and a family of EDGE marks, and that use of Mirror's Edge would infringe our rights. EA did not respond. At the time we first brought the issue to EA's attention, then, promotion of the game had not begun and it would have cost them virtually nothing to select a new name for their game. Then later in 2007 ignoring our complaint, EA tried to register the mark Mirror's Edge in the US, and due to a clerical error by the US Trademark Office their application matured to publication when it should never have been permitted to go to publication. We complained to the US Trademark Office and they investigated the issue, eventually ruling in our favor that they should not have permitted EA's application for Mirror's Edge to be published since it should have been rejected with our EDGE registrations and pending applications cited against it. Despite this defeat in the US Trademark Office EA still refused to even reply to any of our communications since 2007 asking to discuss the matter. Only in August after the US Trademark Office issued a "Letter of Suspension" effectively giving a final rejection to their attempt to register the mark Mirror's Edge in the US (EA "Mirror's Edge" Application Rejected) did EA finally reply to our communications. We negotiated amicably with EA and believed we had worked out an agreement in return for which we agreed to not take action to prevent their game being launched with the name Mirror's Edge. EA have since been slow to close that deal, and while we are still in good faith about closing it, we trust EA are not working with Mobigame and others to seek to undermine our rights in EDGE in the misguided hope that by taking such action they can avoid concluding the deal with us that they negotiated in principal last November.

As to what the "MIRRORS (by) EDGE" was about: EA wrote us saying that in their opinion our game Mirrors would never been confused with their game Mirror's Edge even if we promoted it using our house brand EDGE. From the moment we started promoting it using our house brand EDGE we have been flooded with people linking MIRRORS by EDGE with EA's game Mirror's Edge, thus proving EA wrong. Their use of Mirror's Edge is likely to cause confusion in the consumers mind with our use of our marks Mirrors and Edge, and while it can tend to be reverse confusion (since they have marketed Mirror's Edge so well and our game has yet to be launched) their use is still an infringement of our registered rights, proved in part by all the recent public discussion of our legitmate use of MIRRORS by EDGE to promote our upcoming game.

(Update 8/11/09: From the Internet comments it is clear many people do not understand US trademark law. While the law is designed to protect the consumer from confusion, it also operates to protect the small company from a large company using its trademark and "out marketing it" so that the trademark then becomes associated with the larger company rather than the smaller one. So, no, you do not need to be a large company with a famous trademark to have a valid action for infringement against a large company. Nor does your trademark have to be very well known. Those wishing to educate themselves on US trademark law might wish to check out the landmark court decision on this issue concerning Big O Tires -v- Goodyear, 1977 which still stands as precedent: http://cases.justia.com/us-court-of-appeals/F2/561/1365/419040/)

8. Our game credits system

We believe our game credits system is similar to that of other companies, but we acknowledge there are no norms in the industry as yet (something we hope the IGDA will help achieve). But for producer credits we give credit for each separately produced game, by format and by territory/language version. Questions have arisen over the number of game credits Dr Langdell has given our list of over 750 SKUs is based on fewer games across various platforms and language versions. We can confirm that these 750+ SKUs were produced by over 200 different production teams with Dr Langdell being the producer on each title done by each team. His claim to have over 200 different production credits is thus accurate, and in this valid sense his claim to have worked on over 200 games is entirely true. Again, we note the list of games on this website is not a complete list of the games we have developed and/or published over the past 30 years, it is only a partial list compiled because of public requests that we display some list on our wesbite of our historic and current games, as well as our forthcoming releases.

9. "Edge of Twilight" / Kotaku

On July 12, 2009 Owen Good posted a particularly defamatory article on Kotaku about Edge of Twilight ("Trademark Troll Is At It Again"). Despite the following public announcement clearly proving Edge did not act in any possible sense as "trademark trolls", Kotaku has to-date failed to correct or remove its article, or apologize for it:

PUBLIC STATEMENT

23rd July 2009*

“Edge of Twilight proceeds with title unchanged”

FUZZYEYES™ approached EDGE® Games several months ago, with the intent to resolve any issues arising out of both companies use of the mark "EDGE." Fuzzyeyes, developer of the game titled "Edge of Twilight," sought to address any potential trademark conflicts. Through amicable negotiations, Fuzzyeyes and Edge Games have arrived at a satisfactory arrangement that addresses the concerns of both parties. This arrangement allows the highly anticipated Edge of Twilight to proceed with its title unchanged, and without infringement on any trademarks held by Edge Games.

Lu, Wei-Yao
CEO of FUZZYEYES™

Added by Edge Games:
This statement hopefully clarifies what has been taking place between the parties in contrast to the unfounded and inaccurate speculation that has been circulating the Internet.

------------------

* The original statement had 23 August 2009, but since the release happened on July 23 that was clearly a typing error by Fuzzyeyes.

10. Other false accusations against Edge

Since the first defamatory article against Edge and Dr. Langdell written by Simon Carless, there have been numerous false accusations made against Edge and Dr. Langdell, and many false 'facts' circulated around the Internet and accepted as real facts when they are complete falsehoods. For instance here are just some of the "false facts" circulating the Internet and the truth about them:

• "Edge Games sued U2" (untrue): We have been accused of suing U2 over the name of their guitarist, THE EDGE, and this false 'fact' was even added to Dr. Langdell's public Wikipedia entry as if it was accepted truth (before the entry was removed). This was confirmed by numerous people to be false, as indeed it was and was clearly just invented to further defame Dr. Langdell.
• "Edge has done a thousand law suits" (untrue): Eurogamer accused us and Dr Langdell personally of undertaking "a thousand lawsuits". In reality this company and its predecessors in rights to the marks EDGE and THE EDGE have only ever sued one company. Ever. And that law suit, which took place over a decade ago, was withdrawn when a very amicable settlement was reached. Other than that single law suit, we and our predecessors in rights have only been involved in some 20 or so actions before the US and UK trademark offices, which is a very small number for any company that is actively protecting and defending its registered trademark rights. None of these actions before trademark bodies have been "law suits" nor are they "litigation" so the allegation that we or our CEO personally are "litigious" was utter nonsense and said to defame us and Dr. Langdell.
• "Two programmers sued Edge and so they fled to the US in 1990 rather than pay a court debt" (untrue): Eurogamer and others have also stated that two developers, Michael and Ian Jones, sued our predecessor in rights over non payment for the Commodore 64 version of "Soldier of Light" and repeated the accusations that Edge, and Dr Langdell personally, fled to the US to escape payment of the court judgment. So far as we are aware this is absolute nonesense: we are not aware of any such court case or any such judgment. To the best recollection of those involved, Michael and Ian failed to complete the game and Edge had to get others to complete it at high cost. As far as anyone can recall, because they defaulted on their contract they were not paid in full, which is entirely reasonable. If they did sue Edge (Softek as it was then), then we have no knowledge or recollection of that. Certainly, since the non payment would allegedly have occured in 1988 when Michael and Ian were replaced and the game was released, and since Edge Games did not close its London UK headquarters and complete its move of its primary center of operations to Los Angeles until 1993, there were at least five years where Edge was still based in London that this alleged judgment and sum of money could have been collected. The truth is, as far as we are aware, Edge completed the move of its center of worldwide operations to the US in 1993 with no outstanding valid debts to anyone in the UK. If anyone genuinely disputes this fact then we invite them to make direct contact with us to discuss the issue rather than posting forum and blog entries that are aimed to defame us and our CEO. Best, if Mic or Ian themselves could contact us we would appreciate hearing from you.
• "The Virginia Court found Edge guilty of questionable acts" (untrue): Simon Carless and others falsely stated that the Virginia Court made an unrekoved order criticizing the actions of Dr. Langdell. In fact, the original order only criticized the actions of Edge Games (never Dr. Langdell personally), and that order was voided by the court. Given the order was voided, this means that comment by the court was to be considered as if it had never been made, yet still people are wrongly quoting from that order (as Simon Carless did originally) as if this is some kind of fact that "proves" Dr Langdell is a bad person. Here is the link to the final order in that case showing (a) that Edge Games won that court case including a ruling that it did own the trademarks EDGE and THE EDGE in the US, and (b) voiding the prior order in which the Judge had been critical of Edge Games. Item 5 in the final order reversed the prior order given by the court and quoted by Carless and others.

Edge Games, Inc.
530 South Lake Avenue
Suite 171
Pasadena, CA 91101
Tel: 626 449 4EDGE (4334)
corp@edgegames.com
www.edgegames.com