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Rebellion suing Stardock over Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion

Trademark infringement suit alleges substantial losses suffered as direct result of confusion from strategy game's name.

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Rebellion is suing Stardock over Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion. The trademark suit, which was filed in June in Stardock's home district of Eastern Michigan, alleges that Stardock knowingly infringed on Rebellion's trademark on its name as it pertains to video games both with the title of the space-faring real-time strategy game and in its promotional materials.

The offending logo.
The offending logo.

Rebellion did not stipulate a set amount of damages, instead leaving it to the court to determine how much it was "deprived of substantial sales of its products" and "the value of its trademarks as commercial assets." Rebellion provided several examples where it claimed consumers would have been easily misled, including promotional materials which displayed the word "Rebellion" much larger than the preceding "Sins of a Solar Empire" and some that referred to the game only by the disputed trademark.

Rebellion, which is based in the UK, is the developer behind Sniper Elite V2 and both the 1999 and 2010 Aliens vs. Predator games. Besides publishing Sins of a Solar Empire, Stardock also developed Elemental: War of Magic and The Political Machine 2012, among others.

GameSpot contacted Stardock for comment on the lawsuit, but was told the company does not speak on ongoing court cases. Rebellion had not responded as of publication time.

[CORRECTION]: This article previously identified Stardock as the developer of the Sins of a Solar Empire series. It was developed by Ironclad. GameSpot regrets the error.

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