The Trademark & EA
Electronic Arts was applying for a Trademark for the name "Syndicate" as it relates to a video game. Of course our hopes are that they are remaking the old Syndicate titles or that they have a new one coming out. However, they ran into legal issues when the USPTO deemed their Trademark to be confusingly similar to our Trademark. As we are both fans of EA and the Syndicate games as well as consumers of their products and major testers of their games, when they contacted us to discuss the issue we were interested in supporting them.

The EA lawyers and Syndicate lawyers discussed the matter and in the end, a document was put into place that did several things. First, we agreed that their use of Syndicate as the name of a video game did not conflict with our mark using The Syndicate as the name of an online gaming guild. Second, they agreed to formally recognize the legitimacy of our mark and they agreed that our name can be used by us (and only by us) in all EA titles even if their Terms of Service does not allow for Trademarked names to be used.

So the end result was both a win for EA and a win for The Syndicate. Our mark is now legally recognized and protected with the EA space (which means games like SWTOR need to recognize and enforce the mark) and we supported the creation of a future Syndicate game for a company we are friends with and help test and consult on games for.