Igor Pušenjak Responds With Clarification On The Lima Sky Fights "Doodle" Calamity
January 13, 2011
A couple days ago forums, blogs, and I posted about Lima Sky sending out trademark notices to "Doodle"-related app developers. Igor Pušenjak has taken it upon himself to set the record straight with a lengthier response.
Igor Pušenjak sent an open letter to the folks at PocketGamer.biz, where you can head over to read the entire statement and their exchange of the situation. I would like to make a few personal comments of my own, however.
In his response, Igor goes on to explain that his intentions were simply to guard his "Doodler" and "Doodle Jump" trademark property. The story even goes a bit into trademark law and why Lima Sky took the route they did.
After reading the details, I don't feel it was an overreaction by developers or even most bloggers. I feel Lima Sky doesn't deserve some massive back-stepping sympathy because Igor even admitted it wasn't done properly.
The notice overreached in asking Apple to remove the games and named some games that probably should not have been singled out.Attorneys and the legal system influencing excessive actions, who'd have guessed, right? Humor and evil litigators aside, Igor has chosen to remove his notice, which was actually just a formal request, through Apple, that developers remove any names or other attributes from their apps which may confuse buyers to think they were produced by Lima Sky. As some commenters mentioned in the former post, "copy cat" developers are indeed harmful, but Lima Sky wasn't exactly keeping Doodle Jump 'fresh' enough to rise above and beyond the competition anyway. Protecting your intellectual property is fine, but users would likely agree that he should look more closer at, "my first commitment is to Doodle Jump fans and to making Doodle Jump a great game." In the end, I'm no trademark expert, and I'd guess Mr. Pušenjak isn't either. However, I'm a reasonable guy and can agree with the conclusion of bloggers like 148Apps that Igor was just trying to do things properly, but he may just have made the mistake of letting power hungry lawyers take the reins a bit too much. A lesson for us all, and now it's back to business.