It was one of the great comforts of lockdown, but now Wordle is embroiled in a legal battle with a similarly named game.
The Guardian newspaper reports that Wordle’s owner, The New York Times, has filed a lawsuit against Kory McDonald, the creator of Worldle – the challenge of guessing a location from Google street views.
The NYT claims that this causes confusion to subscribers because of the similarity in appearance and title between the two games. But McDonald told the BBC they are very different: “Wordle is about words, Worldle is about the world, Flaggle is about flags.”
The Guardian quotes the US Patent and Trademark Office, which says: “Trademarks don’t have to be identical to be confusingly similar.”
Wordle – the deceptively simple challenge of having six attempts to guess a five-letter word, a new puzzle set daily – was developed in 2021 by Josh Wardle to entertain his partner during the long months of lockdown. It was bought by The New York Times in 2022 for a reported seven-figure sum.