I forget which movie it was, but I believe Blizzard forced them to change the name from "El Diablo" or the like.. arrgh, brain freeze.

-Jipe

jipe@zworg.com

Yeah, it''s rarely a total black-and-white situation. From all the cases I''ve read about it basically comes down to whether a court could be convinced that your product''s name, packaging, etc. deceives the consumer into believing it''s associated with the trademarked property in question. If you use the name "Coca-Cola" then your product will instantly be associated with the soft drink in the mind of the consumer so you lose. So that''s why it depends on how popular/famous the trademark is, as somebody mentioned.

The one almost indisputable escape hatch in this whole mess is parody. If you write a game that''s a parody of Diablo then you could create artwork, names and logos very similar to the original material (still no direct stealing allowed) and they could do little about it.