Last week, Monster Energy announced that it planned to pursue legal action against developer Glowstick Entertainment over the use of the word “monster” in its game title, Dark Deception: Monsters & Mortals. Now, the sports drink brand is taking it to the big leagues and going after Capcom for Monster Hunter as well as Nintendo for Pokemon. Good luck with that.
As reported by Automaton Media in Japan, the rights holder for Monster Energy has filed trademark complaints against Capcom for using “monster” in Monster Hunter as well as Nintendo for Pokemon (short for Pocket Monsters). Monster Energy claims that the use of the word “monster” would cause confusion with players.
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This isn’t the first time that Monster Energy went after a game developer for such a silly reason. The company was reportedly successful in getting Ubisoft to change the title of its game, Gods & Monsters, to Immortals: Fenyx Rising over the same argument, though Ubisoft insisted that the team independently decided on the name change because it wanted the name of the main character in the title.
On the other hand, Capcom and Nintendo could easily argue that it’s Monster Energy that’s actually causing the confusion. Nintendo has a solid defence too as the Pokemon brand is actually older than Monster Energy while Capcom can also argue that the sports drink has absolutely nothing to do with the Monster Hunter games by just taking one glance at them – something that Monster Energy’s lawyers seem completely incapable of doing.
Either way, even if these lawsuits are unsuccessful, this all looks like a weird publicity stunt to draw attention to the energy drink for some reason. We’re willing to bet that gamers probably won’t want to buy Monster Energy after learning that the energy drink tried to sue their favourite gaming companies and franchises.
Source: Automaton Media
