In today's business world, it's important to protect your trademark, otherwise you run the risk of it falling into the public domain, like Thermos and Trampoline. So we aren't too surprised that InXile Entertainment has used its lawyers to whack a developer with the C&D stick over its game The Alien Wasteland.

Devdan, the lone developer on the action shooter on Steam, said he got the letter from the Wasteland developer because of the similarity in the game names. "Because both games have almost nothing in common and no case of confusion was ever reported for almost two years since my game was first announced, I have been calmly explaining through long emails why we should have no worries about this," he said in a blog post (via GameIndustry.biz). "But I finally ended up receiving a cease and desist letter from their lawyer asking to either stop using 'wasteland' or to prepare facing (sic) legal actions against me."

InXile's Wasteland is an isometric RPG, while The Alien Wasteland was a first person shooter. However, to avoid the legal trouble, DevDan said the game name is now Action Alien.

"Since I don't have the time nor the strength to deal with legal actions from this developer and its lawyers, or even taking the risk of having my game to be took down (sic) from Steam, I decided to change the title to solve this issue, even though this has been a great loss in time and efforts for a very questionable complain (sic)," he said. 

InXile boss Brian Fargo was upset a deal could not be worked out. "I too am frustrated that we couldn’t work out some fair and simple gentleman’s agreement like we have with others in the past," he told Shacknews. "His only option was for us to pay him money and that simply made no sense. I’m certain that if he had sat down and had a reasonable conversation we would have worked out an arrangement that was to his benefit. Even now we’d still be happy to help him promote his game as we would have from the start."

InXile associate producer Thomas Beekers said in a post in the company's forums  inXile has a registered trademark for Wasteland for computer games. "We do not know if the developer of Action Alien was aware of our Registered trademark when he initially named his game and bear absolutely no ill will towards the creator of Action Alien or the game. We always look for amicable win-win solutions in these cases, where we seek to protect our mark as any prudent business would do, while also helping the other party promote their game and provide a bigger reach than he otherwise would get, so that both parties benefit. In fact, that offer still stands now."

In retrospect, it probably wasn't a good idea to mess with a company's game that has Desert Rangers enforcing the law.