No Man's Sky developers win legal battle against Sky Plc

by Mark Tyson on 20 June 2016, 10:01

Tags: Sky

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Where Microsoft tried and failed, Hello Games has succeeded. The makers of the highly anticipated No Man's Sky game Tweeted in relief on Friday as a legal battle with media giant Sky Plc came to a close. Apparently the two firms have agreed on a settlement, meaning Hello Games won't have to rebrand its upcoming open–universe exploration and adventure game.

Just ahead of the weekend Hello Games founder, Sean Murray, Tweeted the news that the game won't have to suffer a last minute name change. Such a change would undoubtedly have a significant financial impact, as brand/name awareness of this game has built pretty well over the last couple of E3 shows.

Murray noted that the Hello Games staff had been rather worried about Sky's legal action as "This is the same folks who made Microsoft change Skydrive to Onedrive... so it was pretty serious".

Terms of the 'settlement' weren't provided and it might well be that the No Man's Sky launch schedule slippage had been precipitated by this legal action going on in the background. With news of this three year legal battle now in the open, companies are likely to simply avoid putting the word Sky into any upcoming product names. Does Sky Plc effectively 'own' the word Sky now?

No Man's Sky is scheduled for release on 9th August in North America, 10th August in Europe and 12th August in the UK. The game will be available for PCs and PS4 games consoles.

HEXUS Forums :: 22 Comments

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Posted by Ferral - Mon 20 Jun 2016 10:19
I didn't think that a company could essentially own a word like Sky and apply such a broad spectrum to it. In that case why didn't they go after Bethesda with SKYrim, the classic Beneath a Steel Sky, Stalker Clear Sky, Trails in the Sky and so on….

Is this just a thing Sky have decided to do because No Mans Sky has been getting one hell of a lot of coverage and is highly anticipated I wonder
Posted by Smudger - Mon 20 Jun 2016 10:21
They made MS change SkyDrive to OneDrive…
Posted by shaithis - Mon 20 Jun 2016 10:21
Wow…..really?

Another reason I am glad to have kicked these money-grabbing-barstewards into touch a while ago. Wish more people would!
Posted by 3s-gtech - Mon 20 Jun 2016 10:29
Yup, the thought of giving Murdoch a penny of my hard-earned makes me feel ill, so no chance of that. Good luck to the developers.
Posted by Luke7 - Mon 20 Jun 2016 10:43
Ferral
I didn't think that a company could essentially own a word like Sky and apply such a broad spectrum to it. In that case why didn't they go after Bethesda with SKYrim, the classic Beneath a Steel Sky, Stalker Clear Sky, Trails in the Sky and so on….

Is this just a thing Sky have decided to do because No Mans Sky has been getting one hell of a lot of coverage and is highly anticipated I wonder

I think it is to do with how ‘Sky’ is used and the surrounding context. By that I mean Skydrive definitely sounds like it should be a Sky product whereas Beneath a Steel Sky is extremely difficult to link to Sky media. No Man's Sky, imo, had a toe over the line which is why it came to Sky's attention, but not enough for them to have a significant legal advantage. Also, I get your point, I hate this sort of intellectual property too, but ‘SKY-rim’ was a silly example to pick.

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