According to a new report, the trademark dispute that the controversial The Day Before is involved in comes from a Korean calendar app of the same name.
Last month, The Day Before developer Fntastic announced it would be delaying the game from March to November, apparently because of a trademark dispute filed by a private individual, meaning the game’s Steam page was blocked. Fntastic later tweeted that, “The so-called ‘owner’ of the rights to the title is the creator of the calendar app, which has nothing to do with the games category.” In a response to Eurogamer, the developer of the calendar app confirmed it owns the trademark rights to the app’s name “The Day Before,” and is “taking measures to protect trademark rights.”
“We first distributed the app under the name ‘The Day Before’ in 2010 to provide anniversary count app services used in many countries around the world,” the developer told Eurogamer. “We hold trademark rights to the app’s name ‘The Day Before’ and have so far recorded over 40m downloads.
“Since the trademark registration in Korea in 2015, we have held the right (registered in the name of ‘The Day Before’ CEO Lee Sun-jae). Knowing that the game of the same name was produced, we are taking measures to protect trademark rights. We currently hold trademark rights in Korea, the United States, China, Russia, Japan, Vietnam, and the European Union.”
Mytona Fntastic Limited has apparently filed an administrative trial in Korea, but the developer of The Day Before app was unable to “deliver the details of the ongoing part,” noting that it wants to “solve the trademark problem as soon as possible and continue to protect the app so that users can use it without worrying.”
The Day Before–the game that is–has been full of controversy for a number of reasons, one of the biggest being that Fntastic has used unpaid “volunteers,” during its development.
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