Yesterday Apple forwarded me correspondence from Atari. They have claimed that my game Asteroids & Arithmetic infringes on their trademark and have requested that it be immediately removed from the App Store.
The email from Apple suggested that I could justify my use of the term and attempt to fight this or remove my app from the store.
Given that I’ve given the app away for free from the start I have no financial means to get into a tussle with Atari. The name was chosen simply because it is descriptive. There are asteroids to shoot and there is arithmetic to do.
There are several other games in the App Store that contain the word Asteroids. I wonder if they got similar letters yesterday.
I am considering what to do with my game. Should I leave it dead? Rename it? For now I’ve got other stuff to do, so it will be unavailable for a while. Sorry about that.
Hey, I downloaded asteroid arithmetic and my son absolutely loves it. This helps him to do his math. We’ve been looking for something exactly like this. My friend came over and they saw my son playing it and wanted to get it for him. I spent several hours trying to find out what happened. I finally found this blog that explains it.
I really hope that you rename it and put it out there again. There are a lot of kids that will get into math more with your help. I will buy battle for vesta just to show my support for the math game. Thank You!
If you do go ahead and come out with it again, please let me know. I would like to spread the word.
Bradley,
I’m trying to come up with a new name. I’ll post here as soon as I have it back in the app store.
Asteroids and Arithmetic is now Math Battle. It will be released on Nov 28, 2011.