Recently, Monster Energy has threatened legal action against the indie gaming company Glowstick Entertainment over a trademark dispute on their game Dark Deceptions: Monsters and Mortals according to Gamerant. Monster is an energy drink maker owned by Coca-Cola which has been notorious for their threats of legal action against other companies who have used the trademark Monster or adjacent terms. While many companies in the past have backed down from these threats, Glowstick Entertainment CEO Vincent Livings went into detail about the company’s efforts to fight this legal battle.

In summary of the tweets Livings posted, he remarked that Monster Energy is a “trademark troll” that uses its wealth to try to bankrupt studios who use any branding similar to their own. He offers to share his findings on Monster related grievances to help other companies in case they get put in a similar situation, ending his tweets by asking people to not support or purchase products from Monster.

1. It’s well known that @MonsterEnergy is a notorious trademark troll. Unfortunately, they’re at it again. For a company that likes to target their drinks at gamers, they also like to try to bully & bankrupt game studios with lengthy high dollar litigation. #indiegamedev #gamedev pic.twitter.com/8xvg7iWqQe

— Vincent Livings (@VincentLivings) March 29, 2023

As far as the actual lawsuit is concerned, MMOS notes that Monster’s lawyers, Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear LLP have filed the complaint based on Glowstick Entertainment’s use of the words monster, beast and unleash. Additionally, the use of claw mark assets and the colors green, white and black are all referenced as being “Monster Energy-like fonts,” which has been another cause of issue for the energy drink company.

Monster’s legal team initially released a settlement proposal, which included Glowstick relinquishing the file trademarks for the word “monster” or any similar word, as well as demanding a change in logo that would have to go through the Monster Energy team’s approval. Livings has declined this proposal and is prepared to deal with the ramifications, whatever they may be. With the long list of people on the receiving end of Monster’s lawsuits including restaurants, welders and a forum for aquarium hobbyists according to Kotaku, it is unclear if there is a definite stopping point for Monster Energy when it comes to their legal pursuits. Glowstick Entertainment pushing back against the energy drink company might be necessary to prevent more of these lawsuits from coming in the future.