When Asus announced the Eee Pad Transformer Prime in November, many saw the name as a lawsuit waiting to happen, and sure enough, Hasbro has filed a complaint with a Los Angeles court. The toy company is seeking damages and an injunction against Asus.
To show just how annoyed Hasbro is they’ve sent a statement, rather light in punctuation, to PaidContent.org which reads: “Hasbro continues to aggressively protect its brands and products and the specific actions we are taking today against Asus underscores yet again Hasbro’s willingness to pursue companies who misappropriate our intellectual property for their own financial gain.”
Hasbro makes the range of shape-shifting robot toys called Transformers, but seeing as the Prime isn’t Asus’s first tablet to use the Transformer name — and the TF101 didn’t anger them to the point of going to court — there has to be more than meets the eye regarding the latest version.
Of course there is, and it should be obvious to anyone who grew up in the 80s, or has been to the cinema in the last three or four years. Adding “Prime” recalls Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots, and as his name is often shortened to simply Prime you can begin to see why Hasbro thought enough was enough.
With tech companies lining up to sue or be sued, it seems odd that nobody at Asus knew this, or bothered to check, before going to market with a new product. All is set to be revealed in Hasbro v. Asus International.
