Trademarkzilla Strikes Again: Complains That Fingerzilla May Confuse People Into Thinking It's Godzilla

from the giving-it-the-finger dept

Toho, the company that holds the rights to “Godzilla” is somewhat notorious for enforcing its rights on others for daring to use the suffix “zilla.” It’s now targeting a two man mobile app development firm for its Fingerzilla game, with particular concerns about the imagery used to promote the game:

Because, apparently, Toho can’t tell a finger from its own monster. The company behind Fingerzilla, Inert Soap, notes that this is just a silly parody of Godzilla. Of course, fighting Godzilla (well, somewhat literally) probably isn’t much fun for a small company, even if it wants to give Toho the finger…

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Companies: inert soap, toho

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Comments on “Trademarkzilla Strikes Again: Complains That Fingerzilla May Confuse People Into Thinking It's Godzilla”

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19 Comments
Capitalist Lion Tamer (profile) says:

Re: How's Mozilla holding up?

There’s more but I hit the wrong key.

They’re concerned with the imagery? It seems like they’re more concerned with five letters, two of which are the same.

I find the imagery more disturbing than confusing. I can imagine hollering at my kids, “Don’t play with Fingerzilla! You don’t know where he’s been!”

Not an Electronic Rodent says:

I always thought.....

… that Godzilla was a sort of phonetic translation of a name of a Japanese monster from folklore (large dinosaur/reptilian beasty famous for eating cities). Can you have a trademark on that sort of thing? Or is this company getting all Disney?

Either way their trademark can’t be *that* strong anyway as I’d never have associated all the things I’ve ever seen called “Godzilla” (a fair few if I think about it) with a single company, never mind any of the myriad other “xxx-zilla” products.

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