A pioneering children’s game that combines digital and physical play has been forced to change its name following a trademark dispute with the British arm of film studio, Warner Bros.
The news comes after the former Fabulous Beasts, a crowdfunded ‘toys-to-life’ game, was accused of infringing the trademark of Warner Bros’ Fantastic Beasts franchise – set to be introduced in the forthcoming Harry Potter spin-off movie, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
Warner Bros claimed that the game’s title was too reminiscent of their own, and could cause consumer confusion in the near future.
However, game developers, Sensible Object, thought differently.
“We have seen no evidence of confusion between our game and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and our view is that even to someone just glancing at the two properties – our game, branding, theme and content are unmistakably different,” said Sensible Object founder, Alex Fleetwood.
But Warner Bros were quick to oppose Sensible Object’s application to trademark the Fabulous Beasts name – and the game developers were unable to reach an amicable agreement with the studio outside of Courts.
“Having held many discussions with them over the past few weeks and having failed to find a way that our name can co-exist with theirs, we feel we are left with no other option than to have to change it,” said a defeated Mr Fleetwood.
Sensible Object have since decided to rename the game, which allows children to stack shapes and objects on top of each other to be ‘recreated’ on a digital platform, as Beasts of Balance.