Heroscapers - Army Builder is a trademarked phrase

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Army Builder is a trademarked phrase

A company called Lone Wolf Development contacted me with the following letter. In short the term Army Builder is trademarked. They pointed out several place where the term was being used on the website. I took care of the places that they pointed out by simply changing the term Army Builder to Army Drafter. Here is the letter:

Quote:

The name Army Builder exclusively refers to the Army Builder BRAND of roster construction software tools (or points calculators, if you prefer). While other roster construction tools certainly exist, the name Army Builder may only be legally used in conjunction with the Army Builder brand from Lone Wolf Development.

Due to the concise nature of the Army Builder name and the product's prominence in the marketplace for more than decade, some consumers may mistakenly use the name to refer to other tools. This is like using the term Band-Aid to refer to another brand of adhesive bandages, and it's something we are legally required to monitor.

Any website where users post information that uses the Army Builder name improperly must either remove the content or revise it, at their discretion. This often results in the content being removed, since sites are frequently reluctant to change content they did not create, and with good reason. The easiest way to avoid having posts removed in the future is to simply use a general term like "points calculator", list creator", or "roster construction tool" in reference to products other than Lone Wolf Development's Army Builder brand.

In case you're wondering why we're actively policing the use of the term, it's a legal requirement that we do this. The term Army Builder is a registered trademark belonging to Lone Wolf Development and as such we have exclusive rights to use that mark in connection with any game-related computer software. If we allow the improper use of our mark, we could ultimately lose the trademark, which would allow another company to legally release a competing product called "Army Builder". We are thus required to do this. If you are interested in understanding this issue better, there is an excellent article on wikipedia (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genericized_trademark).

PLEASE NOTE! Anyone is absolutely welcome to write their own roster creation tools - we have no desire to suppress other people's creativity. We simply require that everyone refrain from using the "Army Builder" trademark when doing so.

Thanks for reading, and I hope this explanation makes the situation clear. If you have general questions about the product, please post them on our support forums at support.wolflair.com or send them to support@wolflair.com. For questions of a legal nature, please send them to legal@wolflair.com.

Rob Bowes, President
Lone Wolf Development

Re: Army Builder is a Copyrighted phrase

Sounds like they're at least being cool about it, and not just dropping a hammer like GW would.

BTW, Lone Wolf's software... sooooooo good.

Re: Army Builder is a Copyrighted phrase

He was quite nice about it.

I've read the article on genericized trademarks before and it's not pretty. The word "escalator" and "band-aid" are prime examples, and I can completely see where he's coming from. :)

You might want to contact Jay Cain about that too, if neither you nor the Lone Wolf guy has already.