Stellar Blade developer Shift Up and Sony are being sued by Stellarblade, in a Spiderman meme-style name trademark battle
There can only be one in the world of name ownership, apparently.
Shift Up and Sony, the developer of one of this year's about 15 million games that came with weird or problematic social media discourses, are reportedly facing a lawsuit over the use of the name Stellar Blade for said game. A film company called - you guessed it - Stellarblade, is the one doing the suing.
As reported by IGN, the non-video game Stellarblade is a Louisiana-based film production company, and it's filed a suit in its home state which alleges that Shift Up and Sony's use of the name Stellar Blade is damaging its business and infinging on a trademark.
The film company is owned by Griffith Chambers Mehaffey, having been established to provide "multimedia entertainment services" in 2010. "Mr. Mehaffey registered the stellarblade.com domain in 2006 and has used the STELLARBLADE name for his business for nearly 15 years," Mehaffey's lawyer said in a statement to IGN, "Given this long-standing and public use, it's difficult to imagine that Shift Up and Sony were unaware of Mr. Mehaffey's established rights before adopting their identical mark."
The statement goes on to claim that Sony and Shift Up's "far superior resources have effectively monopolized online search results for STELLARBLADE, pushing Mr. Mehaffey's long-established business into digital obscurity and threatening the livelihood he's built over more than a decade."
Mehaffey argues that the trademarks for the name registered by his company and Shift up in June 2023 and January 2023 respectively are "confusingly similar", citing percieved similarities in the logos used. The suit is seeking to see Shift Up and Sony "be prevented from using Stellar Blade or any other name similar to it", as well as be requested to hand over "all materials in their possession with 'Stellar Blade' on them", so such material can be destroyed.
Mehaffey is also seeking payment for damages and cover for his legal fees if the suit is successful. Obviously, an interesting element of this is thaty Stellar Blade the game was initially referred to by the working title Project Eve following its initial announcement in 2019, before being re-revealed as Stellar Blade, the name it'd go on to release with, in 2022.