King, the development studio behind Candy Crush Saga is one step closer to trademarking the word "candy." Oh, come on! Really?! For


's sake
. Last February, King filed an application to trademark the word "candy" across a variety of products. These ranged from shower caps (what?) to video games. On January 15 of this year, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office once again showed how badly the system is broken approved King's request.

According to GameZebo, developers that have used the word "candy" in their games are already starting to get notifications from Apple, on behalf of King, about the trademark infringement. One such person is Benny Hsu, developer of All Candy Casino Slots, whom contacted King about this notification. Here is King's response.
"Your use of CANDY SLOTS in your app icon uses our CANDY trade mark exactly, for identical goods, which amounts to trade mark infringement and is likely to lead to consumer confusion and damage to our brand. The addition of only the descriptive term "SLOTS" does nothing to lessen the likelihood of confusion."

Just so we're all on the same page, yes, King's response is actually as douchey as you think.

It's not quite set in stone just yet. As this has been passed only for "publication" from the USPTO, there is still a 30 day window where people can oppose the trademark. Seriously, they're trying to trademark the word "candy." I'm going to be incredibly disappointed if nobody contests this in the next 30 days.

(via Gamezebo)