Usually, major publishers issue cease-and-desist letters to developers of smaller games. In this case, it is the opposite. According to the complaint filed by Activision in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the creator of a browser game called "Warzone" (called Fizzer) has notified Activision that it will cease sales in 2020 and is opposing the trademark application.

According to Activision's complaint, the company filed for the "Warzone" and "Call of Duty: Warzone" trademarks last June in connection with downloadable video games and entertainment services, but the defendant filed a similar trademark for "Warzone" four months later in October application, and subsequently claimed that Activision's trademarks "have already resulted, and continue to result, in confusion, misunderstanding, or deception of relevant consumers" as to the distinction between the two games.

Regarding the browser game at issue, Activision summarized it as brutally as possible in legal documents, stating that "Call of Duty: Warzone could not be more different from defendants' game, a low-budget, niche virtual board game like Hasbro's Risk," and that "the public . is unlikely to confuse the two products or to believe that the two are affiliated or related to each other."

In November, the creators of the web game Warzone (and its spin-off, Warzone Idle, both now available on mobile) filed a lawsuit against Warzone.com, LLC "seeking an injunction against Activision's use of the WARZONE mark, entitled to recover monetary relief as a result of Activision's infringing use," and issued a cease and desist order against Activision. This seems to have upset Activision's apple cart.

And the complaint filed by Activision this month states that "Activision is entitled to a declaration that it does not infringe Defendants' alleged trademark and is entitled to have the pending trademark application mature to registration." The complaint also alleges that "Defendants published Warzone in November 2017." (Incidentally, this was more than two years before the release of Call of Duty: Warzone.)

It remains to be seen how things play out between Activision and Fizzer, but just last month Activision shut down SBMM Warzone, a status tracking site that it claims infringes its copyright and violates its API terms of use.