[pwinnski]

The exterior clearly does, but yeah, the interior doesn't seem particularly familiar.

Fortunately, the letter in question lists the element IKEA finds objectionable: "Your game uses a blue and yellow sign with a Scandinavian name on the store, a blue box-like building, yellow vertical striped shirts identical to those worn by IKEA personnel, a gray path on the floor, furniture that looks like IKEA furniture, and product signage that looks like IKEA signage."

No question that the building exterior and signage are based on IKEA. They might actually violate a trademark. The shirts, sure, not sure that's trademarked, though. Some of the furniture designs might be.

[FormerBandmate]

The whole thing seems like a pastiche of SCP-3008, even down to the title and enemies, which is literally a horror story about a dimension that’s an infinite IKEA. It’s definitely IKEA.

It’s also fair use, no one in their right mind would ever think this is an IKEA product and it doesn’t compete with IKEA in any way

Edit: Apparently the Kickstarter says “Explore the underground SCP laboratories and build towers to the sky to find a way out”. Gee, wonder what company was directly mentioned in the corresponding SCP story

[wellthisisgreat]

> It’s also fair use, no one in their right mind would ever think this is an IKEA product and it doesn’t compete with IKEA in any way

Or there are darker truths and IKEA DOES have products that the horror is competing with

[TeMPOraL]

The mundane reality is likely just that the game reveals a way to exit the maze, which is considered a trade secret and could hurt IKEA's business.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Fair use doesn't apply to trademarks and patents.

[FormerBandmate]

https://www.trademarklawyerfirm.com/what-is-trademark-fair-u...

Yeah, it does. This isn’t a traditional parody on the surface, but IKEA being a labyrinth of horrors can pretty clearly be read as a parody on their unorthodox store design (no one’s making a horror game about being trapped in a Best Buy lmao). The Creative Commons horror story this is ripped off of is officially named “A Perfectly Normal, Regular Old IKEA” on the site (although no one uses the names of SCPs), which adds to that.

[TeMPOraL]

> (no one’s making a horror game about being trapped in a Best Buy lmao)

I know of at least one horror movie made about a supermarket [0], so it's not unprecedented. The IKEA-like aspect here is less "big store after dark" and more of the seemingly infinite maze, which at this point is pretty much a trademark for the brand...

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[0] - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2282989/

[Ptchd]

is a store layout a trademark?

[mywittyname]

It's very likely that this would fall under fair use.

The risk for the developers is that they (probably) don't have the money to fight IKEA in court. Thus, placating them is a more reasonable approach, especially considering that IKEA seem to be good sports about it.