It Takes Two Abandons Trademark Over Take-Two Claim

Other than making huge profit selling Grand Theft Auto V for years across multiple generations, developer/publisher Rockstar Games' parent company Take-Two Interactive is usually great at filing lawsuits and flexing their legal muscles.

Take-Two was busy filing DMCA claims against GTA mods lately ahead of GTA Trilogy: Definitive Edition release. One of their recent claims were targeted at It Takes Two, a critically-acclaimed 2021 game from developer Hazelight Studios.

It was revealed this week that Hazelight was hit with a trademark claim by Take-Two Interactive even before It Takes Two was released and therefore, they had to abandon any ownership and trademark application that name in response.

Although unwilling to comment on ongoing disputes, a spokesperson for Hazelight reveals to be "hopeful it will be resolved". According to US Patent Office records, they didn't argue and were simply forced to abandon trademark on claim.

Take-Two has been on a spree of issuing claims to many businesses and products that has links to words like "bully", "civilization". "mafia", "rockstar", "social club" and more, including terms like "Starrocks" as name for a Beijing company.

Video games industry lawyer Richard Hoeg has stated in Virtual Legality podcast that Take-Two Interactive is being very aggressive in filing requests, 25 challenges in last three months and it takes other studios 6 or 7 years to reach there.

Compared to other Take-Two cases, It Takes Two is not a company name and only has a limited use. Take-Two allegedly does this very frequently to extract some concessions from applicants and people simply do not choose to fight for it.

It Takes Two is a unique co-op experience by Swedish game director Josef Fares and it sold over 3 million copies worldwide. Overall feedbacks have mostly been positive and Hazelight received several nominations at The Game Awards 2021.