So, it turns out we live in a world where companies can (and will) hold lengthy legal battles over the rights to certain words. In this case, Ubisoft and EA are all set for some serious beef over the word “ghost”.
It transpires that Ubisoft filed Notice of Opposition with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on Friday, disputing EA’s attempt at claiming “ghost”, which they applied for last March.
EA seem to be filing the trademark in reference to their subsidiary Ghost Games (the chaps behind games like Need for Speed: Rivals).
However, Ubisoft feel that these new trademarks will confuse the weak minded public, and that we’ll all assume EA are somehow connected with Ubisoft and their series of Ghost Recon games. Maybe EA should be offended that Ubisoft are going to such great lengths to remind people they aren’t the same company.
At any rate, EA have been given until March 29 to respond to the Notice of Opposition, before potential court proceedings begin on April 8. The world will look on with bated breath.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.