King, the creators of Candy Crush Saga and other games, has backtracked on its trademark claim of the word "candy" in the United States, the company confirmed on Tuesday.
The casual game publisher had filed to protect the word "candy" in both the United States and European Union; its claim was originally approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in mid-January.
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Just more than a month later, King filed for trademark abandonment in the U.S. When a trademark is abandoned, its former owner may no longer claim any rights to that trademark.
A spokesperson for King confirmed the news to Mashable via email.:
King has withdrawn its trademark application for Candy in the U.S., which we applied for in February 2013 before we acquired the early rights to Candy Crusher. Each market that King operates in is different with regard to IP. We feel that having the rights to Candy Crusher is the best option for protecting Candy Crush in the U.S. market. This does not affect our E.U. trademark for Candy and we continue to take all appropriate steps to protect our IP.
The original reaction to King's trademark in the United States was not positive. Some game developers said Apple was pulling their games from the App Store because they contained the word "candy" in the title. A group of independent developers also created a project called CandyJam, which invited other developers to create as many games as possible that included the sweet word in the titles.
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