Was reading an [update](https://gamefound.com/en/projects/cogito-ergo-meeple/meeple-inc/updates/9) for a funded crowd funding project and it seems they encountered a hiccup with their original game name (Meeple Inc) as the word ‘meeples’ is already IP in the EU with a German company?
I'm as surprised as the project creators and would just love to hear everyone's thoughts on this.
My gut reaction was that it was just a shitty company being shitty for money reasons.
So I did a little digging and it’s Hans im Glück, publishers of Carcassonne, that trademarked the term. I figured that was fair enough, given that the shape of the Carcassonne followers is what comes to mind when I hear the word meeple. Except did you notice how I said followers instead of meeples?
That’s because the term wasn’t coined by them. It was invented by a gamer called Alison Hansel, who proposed it on BGG as a nickname for the Carcassonne followers.
So I’m left with an amended version of my gut reaction.
It’s a well respected games company acting shitty for money reasons.
You don’t have to invent a word for it to be a trademark. A trademark is just an indicator of the brand identity. In this case, if it refers to the game Carcassonne, then they can use it.
Id argue its gotten to the point of being a generic descriptor beyond just Carcassonne. Tons of games have meeples in them with the exact same shape, the name meeple isnt anymore important for their brand than any other game.
They haven't been very heavy handed with it to be fair. This is the only time I hear of it being used to change a name, and it a titular title so ... fair enough.
They had the trademark since 2017, and we have seen plenty of games use the shape since then. Though most companies use more thematic shape, which I certainly appreciate.
And most companies usually use terms such as worker, which might be because of the trademark? but I don't really care about. Our group usually just call them dudes anyhow.
There totally are corporations that exploit the copyright/trademark system, they claim copyright for something and then sue left and right, hoping for some corporations to just pay.
It's shitty, and a way to protect against that is to register the trademark yourself. Not because you are planning to sue every single little incident, but just to ensure your work isn't abused by those who totally would do so.
Now, to actually keep the trademark, you also need to ensure to enforce it, and you do that by filing against those who blatantly use your trademark (even if it isn't coming from a bad place).
With some copyright, you can release it to fair use, I don't really know if you can do the same with trademark.
But as mentioned, because of companies just using terms like worker, and have customized meeples, noone is really affected - and certainly noone is affected by a bad agent abusing the system.
The fundamental issue here though is that this isn't their term. They didn't come up with it, gamers did. By registering this trademark they appropriated something that isn't theirs and now they're actually causing damage to other companies.
I can understand that the system is fucked up, and if you want to argue that you want it changed, I will not argue against that at all.
But you can't practice law based on how you would like it to be, You need to practice how it actually exists today. And if they didn't do the trademark, there is a good chance someone else would with bad intentions.
Today, with the current laws, this was the best outcome with today's situation.
But was this actually a legitimate trademark claim under the current system in the first place? Seems to me like the term itself was already generic long before this was even filed.
That is a slightly more fair question.
With my layman's knowledge, I guess Hans im Gluck would likely have a good chance to defend that claim in court.
In very short line: The person that coined the term does not use it for any product or otherwise, so they have no claim on it in a trademark sense.
If they had made a product themselves around the time they coined the term, and could show the courts they were the first to use (and continued to use it), then they might have been grated the trademark, but that was decades ago now, so they have no claim.
>Today, with the current laws, this was the best outcome with today's situation.
They could have offered a free license on the trademark instead. Even if the cease and desist was necessary as proof the trademark was being enforced to keep it from being lost, they still could have offered a free license after they sent it.
As I mentioned in a previous comment, I am not sure you can do that with trademarks - unlike copyright material.
You could make agreements with a trademark owner, and they could agree to do it for free, it would just need to state who the owner of the trademark is still, and I think most companies would then rather rename the product than name a competitor on their product.
>When you own a trade mark, you can sell it to someone else or give them permission to use it through a trade mark licensing agreement
That is from the [official EU website](https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/running-business/intellectual-property/trade-marks/index_en.htm). Even if the company decides to go with a name change instead, Hans im Gluck had the option to at least offer the license. If they didn't, that's very disappointing and on them rather than the current laws.
On the other hand, though, HiG could possibly have waited until this game was already in production or even released before issuing the C&D, which would have been a much bigger legal mess. By sending it now, they at least gave this game time to adjust.
So while I don't necessarily agree with the C&D in the first place, at least they weren't total jerks about how they went about it.
I also did some digging and I'm surprised they can't use the word as there are several pre-existing games with "meeple" in the title: Mutant Meeples (2012), Terror in Meeple City (2013), Meeple Circus (2017) and Meeples and Monsters (2022).
As it happens, Terror in Meeple City was originally called Rampage but had to change name due to trademark. So.. I guess they changed it to another trademark?
Fun game too, I had the original Rampage edition.
Takes like a minute to find the HiG trademark. So I am more surprised the creators are clueless here.
HiG usually is rather lenient with the usage of Meeple, at least when asked.
The European database doesn't tell the same story: [https://euipo.europa.eu/eSearch/#details/trademarks/016791741](https://euipo.europa.eu/eSearch/#details/trademarks/016791741) (and it was registered by the original publisher of Carcassonne no less)
What's surprising is why they bared their fangs when many other games include this word in their title.
The headings/subclasses listed are only so as examples. The moment a trademark is registered for a given Nice class, it actually encompasses every type of product within that class. In this case, board games and card games belong to Class 28, along with sports equipment, which is indeed covered by the trademark.
Fun fact: German Chocolate Cake was invented by an American named "German."
Edit: Oops, I wasn't quite right about that. It was invented by an American woman and originally used an American chocolate brand called "German's Chocolate" that was created by an American named "German."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_chocolate_cake
It is only a legitimate meeple if it was manufactured in the Meeple region of Germany, everything else is a violation of EU trade protections
Thats right. Outside of Meeple Germany it can only be called sparkling tokens
Was reading an [update](https://gamefound.com/en/projects/cogito-ergo-meeple/meeple-inc/updates/9) for a funded crowd funding project and it seems they encountered a hiccup with their original game name (Meeple Inc) as the word ‘meeples’ is already IP in the EU with a German company? I'm as surprised as the project creators and would just love to hear everyone's thoughts on this.
My gut reaction was that it was just a shitty company being shitty for money reasons. So I did a little digging and it’s Hans im Glück, publishers of Carcassonne, that trademarked the term. I figured that was fair enough, given that the shape of the Carcassonne followers is what comes to mind when I hear the word meeple. Except did you notice how I said followers instead of meeples? That’s because the term wasn’t coined by them. It was invented by a gamer called Alison Hansel, who proposed it on BGG as a nickname for the Carcassonne followers. So I’m left with an amended version of my gut reaction. It’s a well respected games company acting shitty for money reasons.
Thanks for the info. I hate soulless money-grubbing companies...
You don’t have to invent a word for it to be a trademark. A trademark is just an indicator of the brand identity. In this case, if it refers to the game Carcassonne, then they can use it.
Id argue its gotten to the point of being a generic descriptor beyond just Carcassonne. Tons of games have meeples in them with the exact same shape, the name meeple isnt anymore important for their brand than any other game.
Perhaps, but I wouldn’t be able to say, since I live in America.
I mean same and we arent much more sensible than the EU with trademarks
They haven't been very heavy handed with it to be fair. This is the only time I hear of it being used to change a name, and it a titular title so ... fair enough. They had the trademark since 2017, and we have seen plenty of games use the shape since then. Though most companies use more thematic shape, which I certainly appreciate. And most companies usually use terms such as worker, which might be because of the trademark? but I don't really care about. Our group usually just call them dudes anyhow.
They shouldn't have a trade mark for the term at all, so this is already heavy-handed enough. Absolutely despicable behavior.
There totally are corporations that exploit the copyright/trademark system, they claim copyright for something and then sue left and right, hoping for some corporations to just pay. It's shitty, and a way to protect against that is to register the trademark yourself. Not because you are planning to sue every single little incident, but just to ensure your work isn't abused by those who totally would do so. Now, to actually keep the trademark, you also need to ensure to enforce it, and you do that by filing against those who blatantly use your trademark (even if it isn't coming from a bad place). With some copyright, you can release it to fair use, I don't really know if you can do the same with trademark. But as mentioned, because of companies just using terms like worker, and have customized meeples, noone is really affected - and certainly noone is affected by a bad agent abusing the system.
The fundamental issue here though is that this isn't their term. They didn't come up with it, gamers did. By registering this trademark they appropriated something that isn't theirs and now they're actually causing damage to other companies.
I can understand that the system is fucked up, and if you want to argue that you want it changed, I will not argue against that at all. But you can't practice law based on how you would like it to be, You need to practice how it actually exists today. And if they didn't do the trademark, there is a good chance someone else would with bad intentions. Today, with the current laws, this was the best outcome with today's situation.
But was this actually a legitimate trademark claim under the current system in the first place? Seems to me like the term itself was already generic long before this was even filed.
That is a slightly more fair question. With my layman's knowledge, I guess Hans im Gluck would likely have a good chance to defend that claim in court. In very short line: The person that coined the term does not use it for any product or otherwise, so they have no claim on it in a trademark sense. If they had made a product themselves around the time they coined the term, and could show the courts they were the first to use (and continued to use it), then they might have been grated the trademark, but that was decades ago now, so they have no claim.
>Today, with the current laws, this was the best outcome with today's situation. They could have offered a free license on the trademark instead. Even if the cease and desist was necessary as proof the trademark was being enforced to keep it from being lost, they still could have offered a free license after they sent it.
As I mentioned in a previous comment, I am not sure you can do that with trademarks - unlike copyright material. You could make agreements with a trademark owner, and they could agree to do it for free, it would just need to state who the owner of the trademark is still, and I think most companies would then rather rename the product than name a competitor on their product.
>When you own a trade mark, you can sell it to someone else or give them permission to use it through a trade mark licensing agreement That is from the [official EU website](https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/running-business/intellectual-property/trade-marks/index_en.htm). Even if the company decides to go with a name change instead, Hans im Gluck had the option to at least offer the license. If they didn't, that's very disappointing and on them rather than the current laws.
On the other hand, though, HiG could possibly have waited until this game was already in production or even released before issuing the C&D, which would have been a much bigger legal mess. By sending it now, they at least gave this game time to adjust. So while I don't necessarily agree with the C&D in the first place, at least they weren't total jerks about how they went about it.
I also did some digging and I'm surprised they can't use the word as there are several pre-existing games with "meeple" in the title: Mutant Meeples (2012), Terror in Meeple City (2013), Meeple Circus (2017) and Meeples and Monsters (2022).
As it happens, Terror in Meeple City was originally called Rampage but had to change name due to trademark. So.. I guess they changed it to another trademark? Fun game too, I had the original Rampage edition.
Takes like a minute to find the HiG trademark. So I am more surprised the creators are clueless here. HiG usually is rather lenient with the usage of Meeple, at least when asked.
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The European database doesn't tell the same story: [https://euipo.europa.eu/eSearch/#details/trademarks/016791741](https://euipo.europa.eu/eSearch/#details/trademarks/016791741) (and it was registered by the original publisher of Carcassonne no less) What's surprising is why they bared their fangs when many other games include this word in their title.
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The headings/subclasses listed are only so as examples. The moment a trademark is registered for a given Nice class, it actually encompasses every type of product within that class. In this case, board games and card games belong to Class 28, along with sports equipment, which is indeed covered by the trademark.
There should be a board game using German Chocolate Cakes as the worker token.
Fun fact: German Chocolate Cake was invented by an American named "German." Edit: Oops, I wasn't quite right about that. It was invented by an American woman and originally used an American chocolate brand called "German's Chocolate" that was created by an American named "German." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_chocolate_cake