Because thinking it would confuse people that Nreal is related to Unreal is a reach. One is a word from the dictionary, the other is a modification of said word and it's not even pronounced the same
It's hypocritical because Epic does try to get the PR of a « pro consummer » company and they prove again that it's something they don't deserve
In France we had a show called Burger Quizz, do you think Burger King would have complained about how similar the name is ? Or why Blizzard wouldn't sue Valve because of their anti cheat system called Overwatch ?
It's just a complete reach.
I can absolutely understand the « related industry » stuff for the average joe but you are wrong when you say that there was an intent with « nreal » to be similar to « unreal » (the engine, not the word), or it's yet to be proven because good luck proving basing your company's name over a word = meant to harm another company.
You would be right if the company's name was « Unreal », but it's not. It's « Nreal », and it's totally different. Or Disney could sue MacDonalds because their duck almost got the same name ? Where's the point when it becomes stupid if we didn't already crossed it ?
That is not how trademark laws work though.
It generally encompasses all of human communication -- spoken, logos, written and such.
Pronunciation might matter but the u is pretty silent in a lot of speech and many would also pronounce words beginning with n with an uun sound. If the sales moron in the shop says this is the nreal fancy device and unreal/epic gets a call later when it is junk, or a bad review, or a non returning customer... that is not their fault and the very sort of thing trademark laws are there to try to prevent.
They are presumably the same industry. It is not even that subjective a lot of the time -- you have trademark classifications which trademark peeps buy individual ones for.
https://www.wipo.int/classification...ang=en¬ion=class_headings&version=20190101 and broadly similar for most countries that sign up to it.
I will have to look up for each of them (
https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/show...c&state=4801:oyadah.2.1&a_search=Submit+Query ) but I find it hard to imagine a lack of overlap in this scenario.
Burger king vs burger quizz is presumably both different enough in name and industry (though I would wonder if mcdonalds has a trademark or two here as they do make cartoons and other such media) that it does not matter. Overwatch could be more fun, it is a general term (snipers and similar will provide overwatch for their team) and it would depend upon the customers -- the customers (and it is the general consumer that trademarks are aimed for, sometimes it is specialist, sometimes it is the general public) for anti cheat software possibly not being as confused as those looking for a game.
Trademark law has a concept called genericide. This is where lack of action taken to protect it means the word becomes a generic term for a product and the trademark ceases to be. This is generally considered a bad thing if you are the owner of the trademark as they are valuable things to own.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27026704
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/...-require-companies-tirelessly-censor-internet
Failing to monitor your business field and allowing others to make use of it, along with using things as a verb yourself (there is a reason google does not "google it" in any PR piece you will read).
To that end this seems like a reasonable thing to take a stand on. Whether absolutely essential or theoretically able to left we might debate but far from unreasonable from where I sit.