CrayZ(?)

So i figured this deserved a little investigation. A rumour has been spreading about The War Z again. This time it has been claimed that a month prior to their release of the game they had been notified that their trademark is invalid due to a prior registration of a trademark. The rumour claims that the prior trade mark was the movie World War Z.

Executive Producer Sergey Titov's reaction to the news, as usual, was a massive confidence in the tiny patch of extremely thin ice he stood on. “It basically says that this application is suspended because there's another application with regards to this trademark.”

Since you can actually look this kind of thing up through publicly available patent application records on the internet I thought I'd take a look into it.

As you can see, Sergey; to his credit, included a handy little guide to looking this kind of thing up. The link he provided didn't actually lead anywhere because the search session expires after a few minutes. One can only speculate as to why he didn't just give a direct link to all of the details about his patent application. but the guide is actually quite useful. So lets start there.

1) Go to uspto.gov: Done

2) Go to TESS - trademark search: Its in one of the tabs up top, but OK, not too hard to find

3) Search for War Z: Also not too complicated.

4) Enjoy LIVE trademark!: Yay, all above board and completed and... Oh wait... What's this?

It turns out that trademarks aren't simply either live or dead. If you look a little deeper into the trademark information by clicking into the TSDR you can see its prosecution history. This is basically just a list of notices of actions taken by the office against the claim. If you've ever dealt with any large american bureaucracy you'll be familiar with this as their standard form of transparency. Given the size and scope of these departments its really to their credit that these facilities function as well as they do.

Under prosecution history you can see that the War Z application is suspended. Just like our good buddy Sergey said it had been, and it has been suspended since the first day the examiner looked at it on the 15th of November 2012. But is it a big deal? What's the reasoning behind the suspension? Well, its right there under documents, you can read the suspension letter. “... a mark(s) in a prior-filed pending application(s) may present a bar to registration of applicant’s mark.“

In short this just means that a previous application exists (read: not granted yet) for a trademark of a similar name  that may conflict with their application (World War Z perhaps?).

Where Sergey is wrong is that he seems to think that, when the application for World War Z goes through, his application will still be approved. This is not the case. When the application for World War Z gets approved (which it recently hasbeen) his application will be declined shortly afterwards and he'll be left with his dick in his hand... again.

I cannot imagine the lengths that Sergey Titov must go through to maintain this fantasy world where everything he touches turns to gold and anyone who says otherwise is part of the greatest feat of gang stalking in all of human history. He clearly wasn't prepared to be in the limelight as much as he has been. But he's been so consistently wrong about the facts surrounding his game that one starts to wonder if he is, in fact, either a paranoid delusional or a pathological liar.

*sometimes wonders if everyone is secretly trolling him*

Sources: USPTO, The War Z Forums