The Ultimate Fighting Championship has sued Ubisoft for infringing on its trademark with the Kinect fighting game Fighters Uncaged.
UFC owner Zuffa LLC filed the trademark infringement suit against Ubisoft over a phrase on the back cover of the Xbox 360 game Fighters Uncaged, which says, “Become the ULTIMATE FIGHTING weapon!” Zuffa claims the phrase is “identical or confusingly similar” to its trademarked “Ultimate Fighting” name.
“Defendant’s invitation for players to ‘charge head first into the vicious world of illegal fighting’ tarnishes the goodwill Zuffa has in its UFC marks,” the company said in its lawsuit. “Zuffa has grown a successful mixed martial arts organization by moving away from the image of mixed martial arts as illegal street fighting, and taking it into the realm of a legitimate sport. This was no easy task and required years and much effort to reach today’s legitimacy and widespread acceptance.”
Zuffa is seeking an injunction against the use of its Ultimate Fighting trademarks in the game, a halt to all sales of Fighters Uncaged until the offending text is removed from the packaging and unspecified damages and costs.
The Kinect-exclusive Fighters Uncaged was released in November and is by all reports a stunningly bad game. Eurogamer scored it 2/10, Joystiq’s reviewer refused to play the game long enough to come up with any score at all and Game Informer said people would have more fun just getting into a fight with someone in front of their television. It sounds like Zuffa has a pretty good reason for getting as far away from this game as it possibly can.
Source: Las Vegas Sun, via GamePolitics
