Comadran wins legal battle and keeps Medabots trademark in Japan

The robot game has more than 200,000 users

The Japanese Trademark Office has rejected the arguments filed by Japanese giant Imagineer on 21 January 2022 against the registration of Andorran Kevin Comadran’s Medabots trademark.

Imagineer sought the cancellation of this trademark on the grounds that it could create confusion with its trademark Medarot, which it changed internationally to Medabots. In the pleadings, Imagineer sought cancellation of Comadran’s mark on the grounds that the marks are similar and that it was acquired by Comadran in bad faith.

However, each of the points raised in the opposition brief was ultimately rejected by the court. The Japanese Trademark Office’s decision finds that Imagineer’s mark cannot be said to be widely known to consumers, in Japan or abroad. Furthermore, it rejects that confusion or bad faith has been shown.

Currently, the Medabots game, created by Comadran Studios, in which consumers can battle each other with robots assembled from scratch, continues to grow daily and has more than 200,000 users. It is a fully strategic game in which, in addition to having to complete daily missions, players can compete in different leagues.

In 2017 Kevin Comadran started to design a video game about robot battles and, when he was thinking about the name of the trademark and the possibilities of registration, he discovered that the name Medabots was available because it had been abandoned by its owner, so he decided to register it as a trademark for his game.

It was not until a few years later that Imagineer remembered the trademark (which once belonged to another company and for which this company was a publisher) and wanted to register it, trying to do so in several countries and opposing the trademarks registered by Comadran. Now the Japanese Office considers that Comadran is right.

SOURCE: Medabots