Court refuses to take game name at its face value

The Pudong New Area People's Court was not playing games yesterday when it said Shanghai Shanda's game Sheng Da Fu Weng was not going to confuse people who played Softstar's Da Fu Weng.

Shanghai Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited had been accused of infringing the trademark of the Taiwan-based Softstar Entertainment Inc's Da Fu Weng (in English "Rich Man").

Softstar developed the game Da Fu Weng in 1989 and has now developed the game to its eighth generation. Like the game Monopoly, players in the game move spaces according to the dice they throw and then buy land or houses in a variety of cities and countries.

Softstar registered Da Fu Weng in a three Chinese character symbol as a trademark in May 2005 on China's mainland.

But the court said the company didn't use the three character symbol as a trademark for the game but used it as the name of the game and used the name "Softstar" as a trademark.

Moreover the company's Da Fu Weng games are for PCs not for online gaming.

The Shanghai company's Sheng Da Fu Weng is a similar game but played on line.

"Sheng Da" is the Chinese name for Shanda while the word "Fu Weng" means "Rich Man". The Shanghai company argued that Da Fu Weng was a general name for the game and it had the right to combine the company name Sheng Da with game name Fu Weng to create its own game name and this did not infringe the Softstar's trademark.

"Sheng Da Fu Weng" was launched in June 2006.

The court said any game player who entered Shanghai Shanda's Website and saw the game Sheng Da Fu Weng would understand that Sheng Da was the company name.

"People will split the names into Sheng Da and Fu Weng but will not read it as Sheng plus Da Fu Weng," said Chen Huizhen, the judge.