I've never heard of this company before, but apparently, a Finnish game studio named Futuremark Studios thinks it would be a good idea to trademark the term "pwnage", for reasons unbeknownst to me. Apparently, they have no other reason for doing so besides "We want to do it before anyone else does."

What a bunch of fucknut idiots.

For the same reasoning, you might as well trademark "the", "of", and "Copyright 2008 Agent Chieftain" (LOOK OUT MAN) Unless they have any significant use for trademarking the term, they really shouldn't waste time doing so.

My personal thought on the whole situation is that its completely stupid. While I refuse to ever use the word 'pwnage' (mostly because its reserved for 8 year olds on Counterstrike that heard it once and assume its the right thing to do) as it degrades the gamer lexicon to nothing more than a subculture of improper spelling and retarded kids, I still don't think it should be trademarked just to beat someone else to the punch. Hell, I might as well trademark the fake terms 'FUTUR','EMARKS', and "TUDIOS" and sue them. It looks like they're being denied though.

Outside of affecting in-game communication, I wonder how its going to affect the gamers that use this outside of its meaning. Kotaku takes a look at one instance, using Pwned.com's url as an example. The owner of the site didn't have much to say about it when questioned by MTV, other than this:

PWNED.com is a site for gamers pure and simple. We never felt the need to trademark the word we never created. We do this for fun. We are looking into our options because of this.

I don't really know how to agree/disagree with a statement like that, but they've got the right idea.

So what's your take on this whole bullshit? Do you think they're completely unjustified in doing this? Or are they 2 Legit 2 Quit?

Trademark