When you looked at the recent Need for Speed games from EA subsidiary Ghost Games, did you mistakenly think you were actually buying a game in the long-running Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon series. No? Well, Ubisoft is worried that you might be confused, now or in the future. That's why the company is officially opposing EA's application to trademark the "Ghost" name with the US Patent and Trademark Office.

In a Notice of Opposition posted on the USPTO site, Ubisoft correctly points out that the "Ghost Recon" name has been in use since 2001, long before the first game under the Ghost Games label came out in 2013. But Ubisoft goes on to claim that "applicant’s proposed mark GHOST mark is nearly identical to the GHOST RECON marks used and owned by [Ubisoft]" and that the new mark is "likely... to cause confusion, to cause mistake, or to deceive."

"Consumers are likely to believe, mistakenly, that the goods and services [EA] offers under Applicant’s Mark are provided, sponsored, endorsed, or approved by [Ubisoft], or are in some way affiliated, connected, or associated with [Ubisoft], all to the detriment of [Ubisoft]," the filing argues.

Fights like these over the rights to common dictionary words as subsets of game titles seem to pop up all the time in the industry. Back in 2011, Bethesda parent company Zenimax legally threatened maker Mojang over name similarities toseries (the case was later settled ). Then, in 2014,maker King tried to claim exclusive rights to the word "Candy" in all games, even though hundreds of other games had previously used the word in their titles (King later abandoned that tenuous claim ).

More recently, Sony tried to trademark the "Let's Play" moniker popular with gaming YouTubers before the USPTO ruled that the term was in the public domain.

At this point, perhaps we should be thankful that Atari hasn't tried to trademark the "Adventure" name and that Nintendo hasn't tried to trademark the word "Legend."