"Have Words" wasn't always the game's name

I’ve named this game three times. People that know what they’re doing do it once. All that extra practice provided some small bits of knowledge I can share.

The game started as Taut. It had something to do with some early game mechanic that I really liked. I don’t even remember what it was. Taut didn’t last. It was precious, nobody could tell what it meant, and a fair number of testers read it as “taught.” Not a great sign for a word game. So I went looking for something better.

I landed on Word for Word. Two players trading letters, word for word, it fit. It was kind of clever. Then I checked it. I searched the App Store on my Mac, searched again on my phone to be sure, and nothing close came up. The domain was open, so I put it in my cart. Then I changed the name everywhere. Brand doc, every screen, every file. I figured I’d done my due diligence.

I hadn’t. There’s a whole world of trademark concerns out there. Being a small studio of one, making my first game (well, second or third, but those are other blog posts) which is in no danger of achieving Flappy Bird status, it never occured to me that I should worry about that. A quick google search told me I should.

So I finally looked at the trademark register. “Word for Word” was already there. Live, registered, owned by an educational toy company for twenty years, with a real law firm behind it.

So, important lesson: There are two things to pay attention to. Can I use the name, and can I own it. I could probably have used it, since a kids’ phonics game and an adult word game are different enough that nobody was likely to come after me. But I couldn’t own it. You can’t register a name that’s already registered for more or less your category, and the fact that mine was an app and theirs was cardboard doesn’t get you out of that.

So I’d left Taut to get a name I could own, and replaced it with one I couldn’t, that was also bad for search. Not my best work.

The third time, I checked all three before getting attached to anything. Have Words came back clean on every one. Nothing on the trademark register, clear in the store, and the plain name open to claim. Taut and Word for Word had each failed at least one of those, and so had a couple of other names I tried.

So, the lesson, free of charge. Available and ownable sound like the same thing and aren’t. An open App Store name and an open domain mean the slot is empty. They don’t mean the name is yours. The only way to know if you can own a name is to check the trademark register, properly, in your category. Took me three tries to do that.

More from the build as I go. If you want to know when Have Words ships, the list is at havewords.games.