These are litigious times. It only takes one or two incidents and large corporations start walking around on tiptoe, desperate not to offend or trample anybody, or recruiting armies of overpaid lawyers to protect them from harm. Nevertheless, unscrupulous characters still manage to take advantage of some unfortunate holes in international legal systems, and come away with some nice profits.

According to mega publisher EA, One such individual is Tim Langdell of Edge Games. EA have upped the ante in an ongoing trademark war between the two companies by requesting that several of Edge Games' trademarks be canceled.

According to EA, Edge Games have made several threats over EAs first-person parkour title, Mirror's Edge. Tim Langdell apparently claims infringes on his company's exclusive ownership of the word "edge" in conjunction with games.

Plenty of industry observers have commented on Mr Langdell's bristling defense of his trademarks, including an out-of-court settlement with Australian developed Edge of Twilight. All sorts of shenanigans have been reported, from filing trademark applications half a dozen years after a game's publication; to creating trademarks for projects that will never be initiated; to doctoring materials submitted for trademark applications to retroactively insert trademark symbols not present on the original products.

This may be the first time I have ever felt sympathetic to EA in a legal matter. If their evidence proves accurate, it shows Edge Games in a very bad light, and I feel a grudging admiration for a company willing to try and stomp out the abuse of intellectual property laws, if that's what going on. It can't be less expensive than just paying out a settlement.

I'm no lawyer, and the amount of information on this issue is beyond my ability to summarise. If you're up for some not-so-light reading you can head over to The Independent Gaming Source for a full run down of publicly-available materials pertaining to Edge Games trademark battles, and make up your own mind.

Via GamesIndustry.biz