WTF of the Week: LucasArts Sues Digg.com

1up.com is reporting that LucasArts trademark infringement suit against Digg.com on their trademark for their 12-year old adventure game “The Dig”. What?

Can we please stop this idiocy? LucasArts, your game may have been awesome (I don’t know, I never played it), but it’s 12-years old and I promise you that no one goes to “Digg.com” confusingly thinking that it has something to do with “The Dig.” Actually, Digg.com, I would guess, is far more popular than “The Dig” ever was. Within the dispute:

“THE DIGG mark is confusingly similar in sound, meaning, and appearance to the Opposer’s THE DIG mark…The Applicant’s registration and use of the DIGG Mark would likely create confusion, mistake, or deception in the minds of prospective purchasers as to the origin or source of the Opposer’s Goods associated with THE DIG Mark.”

I’m sorry LucasArts, this is just wrong. First of all, it’s not “thedigg.com”, and I can’t find anything on the site that even mentions something like “The Digg”. It’s simply “Digg”. Even if “the digg” were somehow mentioned somewhere, it’s not somehow going to confuse someone with the single-g spelled “Dig”.

Second, no one is confusing a news aggregator site with a game from 12 years ago. I know sometimes reading news articles can feel like a game, but really, this is confusing no one. Hell, the site could’ve been called “dig” and LucasArts still wouldn’t have much of an argument here.

Third, is “The Dig” even for sale any more? Can I still buy new copies and is LucasArts still actually printing it? I can probably find a place to buy it, but it’s highly unlikely that LucasArts is restocking these as they are sold. The copies that they sold to distributors are already sold… they’ve already made the money to be made on them. Maybe LucasArts is planning a sequel to “The Dig” (which, honestly, I feel like this suit sort of points to)… but the other arguments still apply.

So, “Digg” and “Dig” sound similar… So what? If anything, this similarity probably only INCREASES interest in LucasArts old game. No one will get confused going to “digg.com”, but perhaps someone will say “Digg.com… you know what? I remember an old game called The Dig.. I wonder what ever happened to that game…”

Maybe Namco should sue LucasArts for infringing on their Dig Dug franchise.