Stellar Blade developer being sued over… the name Stellar Blade

digitaltrends.com:

Stellar Blade has been the subject of some strange controversies since its release in late April, but one of the strangest has to be a recent lawsuit filed against developer Shift Up and Sony that claims its name is guilty of trademark infringement.

IGN reports that the lawsuit was filed in a Louisiana court earlier this month by Griffith Chambers Mehaffey, the owner of film production company called Stellarblade LLC. His lawyers claim that he’s been using stellarblade.com since 2006, and that his company has existed since 2010. However, the game’s release has made it tougher for people to find information about his business.

Mehaffey is seeking damages and for Sony and Shift Up to no longer use the name “Stellar Blade.”

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Additionally, the suit claims that the trademarks for his business and Shift Up’s game look “confusingly similar.” Both have blue color schemes and a stylized S, although the two look very different otherwise.

This wasn’t a problem back when the game was announced in 2019 under the name Project EVE, although Sony revealed the Stellar Blade name at its September 2022 State of Play According to U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the Stellar Blade trademark was initially filed in January 2023, with an “opposition” filed on September 11, 2024. Mehaffey filed his own trademark in June 2023, and then sent a cease and desist letter to Shift Up in July.

Stellar Blade was the PlayStation 5’s first big console exclusive release for 2024. While reviews were mixed (Digital Trends said had great style but was “lacking substance”), Shift Up revealed that the game sold 1 million units over the first couple of months. It dropped out of PlayStation’s top 20 downloads list in June.