A War on GDC: in Retrospect
Recently, three simple letters "GDC" initiated a "war" in the game industry. Everything started when Howell International Trade Fair Ltd. (Howell) announced that the Second China Game Developers Conference (CGDC) would be held in Shanghai on July 24-26, 2009. Think Services then, on its website, claimed that Howell and the Second CGDC are violating its intellectual property rights. The war started after that, with both sides pouring their evidence on the media.
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Think Services holds that "GAME DEVELOPERS CONFERENCE" and "GDC" are its trademarks registered in America. Moreover, the First China Game Developers Conference 2007 was held by them; though the three-party partnership terminated after the conference, Think Services remains the rightful trademark holder of "GAME DEVELOPERS CONFERENCE" and "GDC". Therefore, Howell is infringing upon its IP rights by naming the event China GAME DEVELOPERS CONFERENCE.
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Howell then pointed out that the First CGDC was jointly organized with IDG while CMP (Now Think Services) was nothing more than a Strategic International Partner. However, without authorization from the organizer of CGDC, CMP has used for its public promotion content information whose intellectual property rights rightfully belong to the CGDC. In fact, when CGDC moves to the second conference, the Organizing Committee has already switched to a new logo of CGDC, which of course has nothing to do with brands held by Think Services.
Interesting things followed: when LOGIN became an overseas partner to CGDC, Think Services sent a lawyer's letter to it, which immediately ended the partnership. Later LOGIN gave the following reply, in a blog, to the letter sent by Think Services: "Although UBM's legal staff seems to be a bit confused about our upcoming LOGIN conference versus Howell Expo's event, their complaint primarily revolves around the use of the terms "GDC" and "Game Developers Conference". A little over a year ago, CMP (now Think Services, a division of UBM) began trademarking everything related to GDC and the words "Game Developer" and sending out threatening letters. This is why LOGIN initially changed its conference name from "OGDC". In this particular case, Howell claims that they own the rights to China GDC, and that Think Services is attempting to run GDC-China without authorization from CGDC by using its IP. LOGIN regards the term "game developer" existed as a generic expression long before UBM began using it for its conference, and it is a descriptive term, not a brand name. However, being in the right and being able to prove it legally are two very different things. UBM has indicated that they are willing to pursue "legal remedies", and there is no doubt that they are willing to engage in lawsuits to prove that they own "Game Developer Conference", "Game Developer Magazine", and pretty much anything else with the words "game" and "developer" in it.
The whole thing had an interesting turn of event when Howell published a circular by another host of the Second CGDC CGPA, in which CGPA called on its member companies to support CGDC solely. Think Services immediately responded to it: "The China Game Publishers Association (CGPA) recently issued a letter mandating its members to exclusively support the China Game Developers Conference, an event organized by CGPA and operated by Howell International - the organizers of China Joy. This forces CGPA members to participate in a monopoly which is in violation of the Chinese anti-monopoly law".
As the "war" was stepping toward the climax, CGPA, with an even stronger tone, indicated that Think Services was trying to achieve global monopoly and said that it would ask its 130 member companies to protect the rights and interests of the association and continue their resistance toward GDC China. CGPA noted that what it was doing was to protect its intellectual property rights: Think Services, who is not the host of the First CGDC, is infringing upon its rights by using content information of the First CGDC for its own promotion of GDC China. CGPA also revealed that Think Services filed several relevant trademark applications in China but all of them were rejected by the State Trademark Bureau. So its accusation is completely groundless.