Sales +4779! Trademark Disputes +1!

In the last article we spoke in some depth about order numbers, it’s a little dry but there’s no doubt that it’s another facet in the world of EDGE Games that needs making public. Today we’ll try to bounce off some of that order number banter with news on EDGE Games’ latest legal hunt (So skip to the end if your eyes can’t take it).

First here’s a quick list of all the games EDGE have sold (possibly in years):

1001 – 09/01/09  – Mythora – To ChaosEdge
1002 – 09/29/09 – Mythora / Bobby Bearing – To ChaosEdge — Order Cancelled and Refunded
1003 (3462) – 09/30/09 – RACERS – To ChaosEdge
1004 – 10/31/09 – Mythora – To ChaosEdge – Order Cancelled and Refunded
5783 – 11/09/09 – RACERS / Mythora – To ChaosEdge
5784 – 11/09/09 – Bobby Bearing – To ChaosEdge
5785 – 11/10/09 – Bobby Bearing – To ChaosEdge

We won’t even send a bill for doing the accounts book, that’s how nice we really are.

So as you can see there’s a bit of an oddity with those sales numbers. Sure we might not be the only ones buying from the world famous, all original and founder of our beloved industry publisher (That’s EDGE Games if you hadn’t guessed), but some how we seriously doubt that.

In the last article we had gone as far as making order 1004, which was cancelled by Langdell and refunded as “out of stock”. At which point all the store items were set as “out of stock” or “on back order” meaning that NO purchases at that time could be made.

On 9th November Langdell ‘reopened’ and the store began offering items for sale again, so we did a test purchase.

Look at the order number, 5783. Does this mean that in the few hours the store was open Langdell received 4779 orders?

We contacted SmartCart about how the order number system worked.

“We can update the starting invoice number at no additional charge.”

Based on this reponse and past evidence where Langdell tried to claim order 1003 was “a system error” and meant to be 3462 and based on past performance of the store where nobody was buying items except ChaosEdge, this high order number is unlikely to be accurate.

But we need evidence to support this ‘no ones buying’ claim, so the next day another test purchase was made resulting in:

Even though the purchases are nearly a day apart the order number is only one higher, so no other purchases were made in that 24 hours, where as Langdell claims that thousands were made in much less a period of time only the day before.

All in all, this supports the case that Langdell got the order number altered to show a higher number than he has actually sold items for.

To really confirm though we needed another day to test this again:

No surprise, the order number is 5785, one higher than the previous day.

Of course pigs could well be flying here and we could be wrong, but obviously we’ll await that verdict, perhaps when Langdell has to show his tax records in proof that his company is a world class publisher of MODERN GAMES on MODERN PLATFORMS …

One more time for the people: EDGE Games have NEVER published or developed a game on the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, PlayStation, PSP, Xbox 360, Xbox, Wii, Gamecube, N64, Super Nintendo, DS, Gameboy Advance, Gameboy Color, Gameboy, Megadrive (Genesis) or iPhone.

So beyond the order number banter we promised some info into Langdell’s next possible move in the world of trademark trappings and nefarious shenanigans.

Recently, very recently in fact, the EDGE Games website was updated with a whole new range of products. And these aren’t the type that were made by other people and heavy handedly threatened into a licence agreement, but are in fact totally original products that even have that special EDGE Games vibe about them, you know the thing, they look like they’ve been knocked up in Microsoft Paint.

Ladies and gentlemen, we’d like to present to you: THE EDGE(R) MEMORY!

Oh the excitement, USB and SD memory cards! We can’t wait to get out hands on those

Shame.

So maybe these products are the idea of branching out into new realms now that the gaming industry has become sour to the worlds most famous publisher that no one has heard of.

Of course not.

This latest move is part of a battle against computer memory company Edge Tech Corp, a company that Landell has been in trademark wranglings with for much of this year. Yes, that’s another company and another trademark dispute.

Langdell’s dispute has been the usual complaints of customer confusion. We’re sure his inbox has been filled a hundred times over with baffled punters saying that they looked on the wrong site when trying to purchase MIRRORS.

That’s not all, as there’s also been talk of lost sales, all those folks that visited the Edge Tech site by mistake and couldn’t find MIRRORS, ended up buying a few flash sticks, OBVIOUSLY. As you can tell Langdell was furious at these lost imaginary sales, but even he’s not stupid enough to try and challenge the fact that he lost sales to products he doesn’t sell.

So how did he go about fixing that problem?

Snippet from Letter to Trademark Attorney

He updated his website and began to sell memory cards, thus creating confusion, or so he thinks.

“In short, the marks are identical (THE EDGE) and the goods are identical”, no Langdell what you meant to say was “I looked at their website and using Microsoft Paint, I stuck my logo on to some generic memory sticks and then uploaded them to my website”.

UPDATE:

A little more proof to show that Langdell fabricated these memory card images only the day before sending out the legal letter to show that EDGE Games sells the products. As you can see at the right of both the images (One image for each memory card) the date of uploading is 5th November 2009, and the letter sent out (See above image) was stamped as 6th November 2009.

So we’d like to wish Edge Tech Corp all the best in this trademark wrangle, we’re behind you all the way.

We can’t end this article without showing just how the game industry community is reacting to Langdell’s trademark ways: ATOMIC EDGE GAMES

Let’s thank Langdell, no really, we should thank him, because it’s times like these that really draw folk together. Who’d have thought the day would arise when Indie’s the world over would be coming together alongside the likes of EA? That’s the power of this event and it’s a nice way to look at a brighter side of all this negativity.