Quote:
Originally Posted by P3wnd_666
there is a campaign editor in it which many of my friends and people who played it in my local community referred to as an army builder before the release of your software
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If I understand this correctly, your local gaming community used the term "army builder" for an editor within a computer game. And you're using that as the basis for claiming the term "army builder" was not popularized within the miniatures gaming community by our Army Builder product brand over the past 12 years.
Here's some information to consider. If you do a search through the Usenet archives on Google dating back to 1997, you won't find references to the term "army builder". Starting in 1998, references abound, and they all refer to our Army Builder product. If you search through the old eGroups (now YahooGroups) archives, you'll get similar results. Back in 2003, the US Patent & Trademark Office did an exhaustive search of their own to vet our trademark application. If the term had been in use as a general term, the application would have been denied. However, the USPTO drew the conclusion that the term was suitable to grant the trademark.
So it's quite possible that your local gaming group used the term "army builder" back in 1997. However, an isolated group does not make for widespread use. The widespread popularity of the term "army builder" within the miniatures community is attributable to the global adoption of the Army Builder brand as a de facto standard over the past 12 years, and the term has acquired significant secondary meaning as a result.