Wake Up Meeple, You’re Being Trademarked – Carcassonne Publisher Sets off Industry Sparks
Here’s how a cease and desist letter from the publishers of Carcassone kicked off an industry storm around the word Meeple.
At the end of May, one board game’s crowdfunded success turned out to be the spark of a much larger issue: who, if anyone, owns the word “Meeple.” Well, who owns the trademark for the word meeple, since you can’t actually own a word, just declare that you own the usage to its rights for commercial purposes.
And to many, that the industry is even considering the word meeple as trademarked is quite a surprise. If you’re somehow not familiar, I don’t know how you made it this long without playing a board game. It’s one of those words like Kleenex or Band-Aid where the thing it refers to probably has a generic name, but nobody uses it. When was the last time you cut your finger and asked someone for an “adhesive bandage”?
Or if you’re in the UK, when was the last time you needed to sign a document and asked someone for a “ballpoint pen”?
Meeples?
So too is it with meeples, the little wooden board game person. Meeple is everywhere in the industry. These little wooden guys have been around for a while. The term itself became popularized in 2000 thanks to the internet, specifically Boardgame Geek.
Since then, the term meeple has become omnipresent. There are board games that have animal shaped meeples, monster meeples, and even meeples that can hold weapons. Many games that use the word meeple, including Mutant Meeples, Terror in Meeple City, and Meeples and Monsters.
The term was widespread—so widespread that everyone just assumed it was “a board game thing” that anyone could use. That is until this May. At the end of May, the company once known as Cogito Ergo Meeple received a cease-and-desist letter from Carcassonne publisher Hans Im Glueck. It addressed the use of its trademark on the word Meeple. This led to a resounding, “Wait, Meeple is trademarked?”
Meeple Trademark Causes Meeples Inc. to Lose a Turn
The company formerly known as Cogito Ergo Meeple received a cease and desist letter from “a company” at the end of May. In an update posted on its Gamefound page, the company revealed that it would be rebranding as Cotswold Games and its worker placement game, Meeple Inc., as Tabletop Inc.
Why the de-meeplification? Because both the word meeple and the unique wooden shape were registered as intellectual property in the EU. As Cotswold Games put it:
“We were a little surprised as the term is used so frequently in the hobby. We thought Meeples belonged to all board gamers, it appears they don’t. We of course have zero interest in using anyone else’s IP so we think the best option is to do as they ask.”
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BoardGameWire had more details on the story, though. They actually saw the letter in question. It asserts Carcassonne publisher Hans Im Glueck’s ownership of the “German and European trademarks for the word meeple across a wide range of use cases, as well as the trademark representing the classic meeple figure.”
And per BoardGameWire’s reporting, the cease and desist letter has much wider implications. They spoke to Corey Thompson, whom you might recognize from the Board Games Insider Podcast, about how the industry might be affected:
“I had just reported the news about Cogito Ergo Meeple for Board Game Insider on May 30, and after we recorded, I called my friend Marian to ask her opinion on it.
We talked about implications for a while, then I asked, ‘Well, who holds the trademark in the US?’. Marian instantly knew how to look it up, and we discovered… no one held it.
There was a pause, then we both said, ‘Maybe we should apply’.”
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Now, you could be forgiven for not knowing that the word meeple was trademarked. After all, Hans Im Glueck didn’t succeed in registering the trademark until 2019. The process had substantive objections from miniatures-ranking-website-turned-board-game-publisher CMON.
Now, it seems, the future of meeples is up in the air. But when the dust settles, we’ll know where meeples stand.
Probably as a knight in a city somewhere, but possibly as a monk or highwayman.
