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SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT: ELECTRONIC ARTS DISPUTE

There has been a lot of misunderstanding both about our dispute with EA and the settlement and resulting Court Order. We hope to clarify the true facts here, since EDGE did not lose to EA in the way many in the media have falsely portrayed the outcome. Most important, EDGE did not 'lose all its trademarks,' nor was either EDGE or its CEO Dr Langdell found guilty of fraud or fabricating evidence. Most important, the decision reaffirmed all of EDGE's key trademark rights in the US while leaving all of our trademark rights in the UK, France, Germany and the EU completely whole and untouched.

In around 2009 and early 2010, we were in an amicable discussion with EA regarding their title "Mirror's Edge" and their use of our mark EDGE in a game's name. We had provisionally discussed EA paying us $50,000 for the rights, which sum we did NOT request, it was EA who offered it. We never threaten people and seek payment from people for the use of the mark EDGE, despite false rumors by Papazian and others to the contrary.

Then we were approached by a contingency law firm, Lanier, based in Texas. They were riding high on multi-billion-dollar lawsuit wins against the likes of Toyota and had heard about our dispute with EA. They convinced us to let them take action against EA, even though we were hesitant to do so. Without gaining our permission first, Lanier filed for what is called a 'preliminary injunction' against EA to stop the sale of "Mirror's Edge" in the U.S. -- as far as we can tell, Lanier's idea was that they would get a quick settlement with EA if they got the injunction. Again, they did not ask our permission before doing this and we felt it was a very bad idea.

In the courtroom in October 2010, Lanier's attorneys proved to know very little about trademark law (having represented to us they were experts), and EA's attorneys wiped the floor with Lanier. To be somewhat fair to Lanier, EA used some rather underhand tricks, such as presenting the falsehoods created by Mobigame's Papazian to the judge as if they were accepted fact (such as the idea EDGE does not produce games, its CEO is a 'well known' trademark troll, and other outright falsehoods). EA also borrowed from a group supporting Mobigame that had faked some trademark specimen evidence to make it look like EDGE or its CEO Dr Langdell had committed fraud on the trademark office. In fact it was this group supporting Papazian who had fabricated images to make it look as if EDGE had committed fraud, so in real terms by EA submitting the Papazian-backed images to the court it was EA committing fraud. Regardless, EA managed to get the judge very angry at EDGE and its CEO Langdell, and Lanier's attorneys were not permitted to respond. So the judge issued a highly biased 'Opinion' along with his denial of the preliminary injunction -- most people missed that it was merely the judge's opinion, not a series of legal findings based on litigation of the issues on their merits. Besides the fake images presented by EA to fool the judge, there was no evidence presented and no complete trial on the issues. In any event, the court case was set for a jury trial, so it would not have been the judge making decisions on such facts anyway.

The Lanier attorneys disappeared from the courthouse that day never to be seen or heard of again despite a contract with us to legally represent us at their cost until the conclusion of the trial. This left EDGE in an impossible position since there was no way EDGE could suddenly find new attorneys at that stage. EA thus forced us into reaching a settlement with them.

On its face it may seem that EA won and EDGE lost, but this is not what happened. The final court order was as the result of a ' stipulated judgment' -- that is, a judgment that EA and we wrote, not one the court or the judge wrote. The wording of the final decision in the case was more in EDGE's favor than most people realize since it was a cornerstone of the settlement that EDGE and Dr Langdell not be found to have committed fraud on the trademark office, not to be found to have faked any evidence, or to have committed any other wrongdoing. The settlement was also on condition that EDGE's common law rights in its EDGE marks in the US were preserved, with EDGE not being found to have ever abandoned its rights in its EDGE marks. EDGE was also permitted to file a new registration for EDGE GAMES while consenting to voluntarily cancel some of its other EDGE marks. This meant EDGE did not lose its registered trademark rights for even a day, and retained all its common law rights that are the rights that determine who owns a mark. The handful of registrations EDGE was forced to voluntarily give up were none of them cancelled based on their being illegitimate marks, or that they were obtained improperly, or that they had been abandoned. It was agreed they were entirely legitimate registrations and it was merely a commercial compromise that EDGE agreed to abandon them. The court order cancelling them was intended to be a back-up option in case the trademark office refused to accept the voluntary cancellations.

As it happened, after the court case ended, when EA went to the trademark office with our voluntary cancellations the trademark office refused to process them because it was pointed out that some of our marks mentioned in the court document were jointly owned by another company that was not part of the court case. This rendered the court ruling void. The parties and the trademark office remained in limbo on the issue for 3 years until in 2013 the Commissioner for Trademarks decided to act on the court order to cancel the marks even though the court order was void on its face - simply because EDGE had not successfully got the court order formally voided, even though we had a right to do so.

When the dust settled, EDGE still owns all of its US trademark rights and the EA dispute left our UK, French, German and EU registrations all unaffected. EA were left with special permission to use our mark EDGE in its name "Mirror's Edge" with a suggestion that there be no sequel to their game. We believe they never did produce a sequel using the mark EDGE in its name.

On its face it may seem that EA won and EDGE lost, but this is not what happened. The final court order was as the result of a ' stipulated judgment' -- that is, a judgment that EA and we wrote, not one the court or the judge wrote. The wording of the final decision in the case was more in EDGE's favor than most people realize since it was a cornerstone of the settlement that EDGE and Dr Langdell not be found to have committed fraud on the trademark office, not to be found to have faked any evidence, or to have committed any other wrongdoing. The settlement was also on condition that EDGE's common law rights in its EDGE marks in the US were presevered, with EDGE not being found to have ever abandoned its rights in its EDGE marks. EDGE was also permitted to file a new registration for EDGE GAMES while consenting to voluntarily cancel some of its other EDGE marks. This meant EDGE did not lose its registered trademark rights for even a day, and retained all its common law rights that are the rights that determine who owns a mark. The handful of registrations EDGE was forced to voluntarily give up were none of them cancelled based on their being illigitemate marks, or that they were obtained impropoerly, or that they had been abandoned. It was agreed they were entirely legtimate registrations and it was merely a commercial compromise that EDGE agreed to abandon them. The court order cancelling them was intended to be a back-up option in case the trademark office refused to accept the voluntary cancellations.

Again, it was a key term of the EA settlement that there was to be no court order finding anyone had committed any wrongdoing. This term of the settlement was intended to undo any suggestion of wrongdoing implied in Judge Alsup's prior Opinion:

As it happened, after the court case ended, when EA went to the trademark office with our voluntary cancellations the trademark office refused to process them because it was pointed out that some of our marks mentioned in the court document were jointly owned by another company that was not part of the court case. This rendered the court ruling void. The parties and the trademark office remained in limbo on the issue for 3 years until in 2013 the Commissioner for Trademarks decided to act on the court order to cancel the marks even though the court order was void on its face - simply because EDGE had not successfully got the court order formally voided, even though we had a right to do so.

When the dust settled, EDGE still owns all of its US trademark rights, has many of its US registrations back (with more about to be obtained again) and the EA dispute settlement left our UK, French, German and EU registrations all unaffected. EA were left with special permission to use our mark EDGE in its name "Mirror's Edge" with a suggestion that there be no sequel to their game. We believe they never did produce a sequel using the mark EDGE in its name.

One final comment: much of the game press also missed the fact that we had a 2008 Federal Court ruling in our favor that was fully litigated. This was the Velocity Micro case that we won and the ruling decided that EDGE is the true owner of all its EDGE marks, had never obtained any of them through fraud, and had never abandoned any of its EDGE marks. Thus, if the EA case had gone forward to a jury trial as planned, it would have been thrown out because the San Francisco court did not have the right to re-try a case that had already been decided by another Federal Court (as to whether we are the legitmate owners of the EDGE marks, whether any fraud was ever committed in obtaining our marks, etc). Had the Lanier attorneys known even the basics of trademark law they would have realized they had an easy win against EA by just citing the outcome of the 2008 case.

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT:
On Bo Jangeborg and Fairlight, on Mobigame, on Future Publishing, on EA, on miscelaneous fake news