The Makers of Candy Crush Won't Trademark "Candy" After All

Well, that was fast. Little more than a month after the US Patent and Trademark Office approved a request by Candy Crush Saga-creator King.com to trademark the word "Candy," the company has withdraw its application—at least in the United States. The news, which surfaced last night in the form of a request for abandonment filed by King, comes a week after the mobile gaming giant was reported to be planning to go public on the US stock market.

Whether or not this was a response to public pressure or the increased scrutiny that comes with rumors of an initial public offering remains unclear. In a statement given to several gaming outlets (posted here on Kotaku), King said that while it still plans to protect its Candy Crush intellectual property as best it can, the company didn't think pursuing a trademark for the word "candy" was necessarily the best way to do so:

King has withdrawn its trademark application for Candy in the US, which we applied for in February 2013 before we acquired the early rights to Candy Crusher. Each market that King operates in is different with regard to IP. We feel that having the rights to Candy Crusher is the best option for protecting Candy Crush in the U.S. market. This does not affect our EU trademark for Candy and we continue to take all appropriate steps to protect our IP.

King hadn't done its public image any favors by pursuing the trademark. Even by the admittedly absurd standards of the modern tech industry, many felt that King was being ridiculous. Indie developers, who feared that they'd be the targets of King's potential abuses, even started an online game jam in protest. And it wasn't just the word "candy" either. Shortly after news began to trickle out about other mobile developers receiving legal notices for their candy-themed games, the small independent studio Stoic found itself under King's microscope for its Viking-themed strategy game The Banner Saga.

Given that King is reported to make as much as $1 million a day off Candy Crush, critics felt that the company was going too far. But this wasn't just coming from gamers and indie developers—both groups that don't need much prodding to whip up a storm online. By last week, the tension had escalated to the point that the International Game Developers Association felt compelled to comment on the issue, issuing a statement online that called King's efforts "predatory."

As King's own statement suggests, this doesn't mean that the company is going to back away from the issue entirely. If anything, the fact that it's planning an IPO could suggest that it will have to act more defensively than it already has to protect its most valuable product. None of the company's other games come close to Candy Crush's success, after all. The game currently accounts for 78 percent of King's gross mobile bookings, and 86 percent of the company's overall mobile bookings.