Sony sued over Stellar Blade trademark just as Shift Up clears Nikke plagiarizing scandal

Turbulent days for the legal department

Shift Up / Sony

A film production company called Stellarblade has sued Sony over Stellar Blade, the action title made by South Korean developer Shift Up, arguing that Sony’s use of the name infringes on the film company’s trademark, according to IGN.

Although owner Griffith Chambers Mehaffey has been operating Stellarblade since 2010 with its web domain going back to 2006 (longevity and active use are important factors in regard to trademarks), he only filed a formal trademark for the name in June 2023 – a total of five months after Sony and Shift Up filed their trademark for Stellar Blade, which had previously been known as Project Eve and went through a rebranding process at the time.

Despite filing for the trademark later, Mehaffey now argues that Sony’s trademark is “confusingly similar” to his own, pointing towards the stylized ‘S’ and use of colors in the branding. According to Mehaffey’s lawyer, Sony used its superior resources to flood the web with information about its video game, making it nigh impossible for potential clients to find the film company and thus “threatening” the owner’s livelihood.

He demands nothing less than Sony and Shift Up being forced to give up the use of Stellar Blade and any similar names in perpetuity and that all existing material branded in this way be handed over to be destroyed. It’s a common legal tactic to make overly grand demands in order to extract some more concessions from the opposing party.

This lawsuit came in just as Shift Up had dealt with a different legal crisis: Several months ago, the developer was accused of plagiarizing a Japanese artist’s character designs for its popular gacha game Goddess of Victory: Nikke, for which it publicly apologized on September 24, 2024.

In the statement, the developer declared that the issue was settled through private talks with two plagiarized NPC designs getting taken out of Nikke and a playable character being granted the original artist’s permission to remain in the game.

Shift Up went public on the South Korean stock exchange earlier this year, becoming 2024’s second-biggest IPO in the country up to that point. Check out our Stellar Blade review for a closer look at the game.