A Cease-and-Desist Over a Common-Term Trademark: The Figma Dev Mode Case for Game Studios

A cease-and-desist letter is an out-of-court demand from a rights holder to stop using a sign it considers its trademark. Such a letter isn't equivalent to a court ruling or a fine; it stakes out a position: the company signals that it sees an infringement and offers to have it stopped voluntarily, before the matter reaches a lawsuit.

That's exactly the kind of letter the Swedish startup Lovable received in 2025.

Figma had registered the phrase "Dev Mode" as a trademark in the US (even though dozens of products use the term for a developer-facing mode). The company demanded that Lovable drop the name from its own feature of the same name. The story became a convenient teaching case: what to do when a rights holder claims a monopoly on a word the industry has used for years. Below we walk through it as a map of what to do.

What happened with Figma and Dev Mode

• Figma filed a trademark application for DEV MODE with the USPTO on 16 June 2023. The office found the sign descriptive, so the mark landed on the Supplemental Register (the register for descriptive signs, with weaker protection), where protection is lower than on the Principal Register. Registration went through in November 2024.
• In parallel, Figma obtained the mark in the EU through the EUIPO. The UK office (UK IPO) refused registration.
• In April 2025, Figma sent Lovable a cease-and-desist letter: drop the Dev Mode name and every mention of the term.
• Lovable co-founder Anton Osika publicly refused to change the name and posted the letter on social media.

As of July 2026 there's no public legal resolution: no withdrawal of the letter, cancellation of the mark, or lawsuit has been reported in open sources, and the mark remains on the Supplemental Register. The disputed name has meanwhile left the product — Lovable's documentation now describes the code-editing feature as the code editor, without the Dev Mode name.

The first thing to do: look at the mark itself

The letter leans on its wording, but the strength of the demand depends on what's behind the mark. Three things to check.

Which register the mark is on. The US has two. The Principal Register gives a presumption of exclusive rights across the whole country. The Supplemental Register means the office found the sign descriptive and refused full registration. Figma's mark is on the latter. It grants no presumption of a monopoly on the word, and it's markedly easier to challenge.

Which country the mark covers. A trademark is territorial. Figma's story shows it in practice: the same term was registered in the US and the EU but refused in Britain. So the first question about any letter is whether the sender even holds a mark in your jurisdiction.

Which goods and services it covers. A mark protects a word only inside a specific class, never the word outright. That's where the complaint about selectiveness comes from: Figma didn't write to Microsoft or Atlassian, though they've used dev mode for years. The official explanation is a different class of goods and services. Critics read it differently: pressure on a direct competitor rather than brand protection.

Prior use, not prior art: how a trademark differs from a patent

The term prior art comes up a lot in these discussions. It's a trap: prior art belongs to patents and doesn't apply to trademarks. The distinction matters.

A patent requires novelty: the invention has to be non-obvious and previously unknown. A trademark needs no novelty. What it needs is distinctiveness: the mark has to point to a specific producer rather than describe the product itself. So no one is obliged to invent a word, and the argument "the term is old" would kill a patent application while doing nothing, on its own, to a trademark.

What does work against a mark on a common term is something else: prior use and descriptiveness. If other companies used the word as an ordinary name for a feature long before registration, the mark is vulnerable on two fronts at once. It's descriptive, and therefore weak or not registrable at all; and it isn't distinctive, because it points to no one in particular. For Dev Mode there are dozens of such examples: developer mode exists in Apple iOS, Google Chrome, Microsoft Xbox; dev mode has been used for years by Atlassian, Wix, Shopify and many open-source projects.

There's a related risk for the owner itself — genericide (when a mark turns into an everyday word and loses protection). The more obvious it is that a term has long since become industry slang, the weaker the position of whoever claims a monopoly on it.

Your options when a letter arrives

Ignoring the letter entirely is risky: silence doesn't stop escalation, and the rights holder can go to court. Complying at the first word isn't required either. There are several practical routes.

A word on the TTAB. The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board is an administrative body at the USPTO where you file a petition to cancel or annul a registration. For a mark like Dev Mode it's cheaper and faster than court: instead of waiting for a lawsuit, you bring the evidence of prior use and descriptiveness yourself and ask for the registration to be cancelled. The route is public, and the mere existence of such a petition shifts the negotiating position.

One takeaway worth keeping in mind: an office's approval doesn't equal an unchallengeable right. Registration happens without a contest between the parties, so a weak mark can perfectly well obtain one. It gets tested only when someone decides to challenge it.

We start by assessing the strength of the mark itself: where it's registered, in what class, whether the term is descriptive. We always reply by letter: silence can be read against the client. Then we do the economics: the cost of the conflict against the cost of renaming, and often a soft rebrand turns out simpler. If there are grounds for lawfully cancelling someone else's mark, we take that route, but we prefer an amicable settlement.
— Gennady Kurdiumov, Co-Founder FUTURA Digital

When to call a lawyer

Not every letter calls for an immediate trip to a lawyer. But there are thresholds past which doing it yourself costs more than the consultation:

• The mark applies in your jurisdiction and in your class of goods. Then the risk is real, and you're better off acting on a lawyer's advice.
• The name is woven into the brand: it's on the storefront, in advertising, in the product interface. A retroactive rebrand will cost a lot.
• The letter sets a short deadline and threatens specific sums. Deadlines are best not missed, even with a weak mark.

The same logic in other cases

The Figma–Lovable dispute is far from the first where a company claims rights to a common word and leans on whoever uses it. Here are three stories with the same mechanics and three different endings.

• King and the word candy (2013–2014). The maker of Candy Crush Saga filed a US trademark application for the word candy and, through Apple's legal department, began pressuring small studios that had the word in their game titles. Indie developers answered publicly: they ran a protest Candy Jam and released dozens of games with the words candy and saga. In February 2014 King withdrew the US application itself, while keeping the mark in the EU. The volume of the demands didn't match the strength of the mark.
• ZeniMax v. Mojang over the word Scrolls (2011–2012). The owner of The Elder Scrolls series filed suit in a Swedish court when Mojang tried to register the mark Scrolls with the USPTO for a card game. The court denied an injunction and let Mojang keep working under the name, which pointed to the weakness of the plaintiff's position. In March 2012 the parties settled: the Scrolls mark stayed with ZeniMax, which licensed it to Mojang for the released game.
• Sky v. Microsoft over SkyDrive (2013–2014). The British broadcaster BSkyB considered that the name of the SkyDrive cloud storage infringed its SKY mark, and won in the High Court of England in June 2013. Microsoft chose not to fight on and renamed the service OneDrive. When a mark is strong and applies in your jurisdiction, renaming is sometimes cheaper than war, even for a company that size.

Why this matters for studios on several markets

For a team selling a game globally, the territoriality of marks becomes a task of its own. A sign that's free in one country may be taken in another.

To enter MENA, for instance, you need separate checks with the local offices: an EU or US registration doesn't apply there. The practical principle is a single one: check others' marks and register your own in the jurisdictions where you actually operate, not only at home.

A studio was preparing to launch a mobile game on a new market, and a pre-release check turned up that the name of one of the game's modes coincided with someone else's mark, registered in the same class. The conflict surfaced during the check rather than from a rights holder's letter — and that's the main lesson: the check took days, whereas renaming after launch would have cost the marketing budget and part of the recognition. We solved it by renaming the mode in the local version and left the global brand untouched. We always advise those entering a new market: checking others' marks is an item on the launch checklist before localization, not after.
— Gennady Kurdiumov, Co-Founder FUTURA Digital

What this means for your studio

• Check the mark. Register, jurisdiction, class of goods. A weak mark in a foreign country and a different class changes the whole picture.
• Tell a patent from a trademark. A mark needs no novelty; it needs distinctiveness. The argument that a term has long been common strikes at a mark through descriptiveness and prior use.
• Don't ignore it, but don't give in at once either. Between silence and renaming there's a reply letter, negotiation and a TTAB petition.
• Register the mark where your main market is. Territoriality protects both against others' claims and against someone taking your name first.

Checking others' marks before launch is a few hours of a lawyer's work; a forced rebrand after release costs many times more.

Frequently asked questions

Can you just ignore a cease-and-desist letter? Technically yes — the letter itself has no legal force. But silence doesn't remove the risk: the rights holder can go to court, and missed deadlines will weaken your position. It's safer to reply, even if you're sure you're in the right.

What is prior use for a trademark? It's the use of a sign by other companies before the applicant registered it. If a common term was, long before registration, an ordinary name for a feature used by many, the mark can be challenged as descriptive and non-distinctive.

How does a trademark differ from a patent in this dispute? A patent needs novelty, a trademark needs distinctiveness. So the argument that a word is old and common wouldn't have saved a patent, yet it works directly against a trademark.

Does a US trademark apply in my country? No. Marks are territorial: a US registration doesn't cover the EU, the UK or the UAE. You need to check the office of the jurisdiction where you operate.

What is the TTAB and why go there? The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board at the USPTO is an administrative body where you file a petition to cancel a registration. For a weak mark it's cheaper than court: you bring the evidence of prior use and ask for the mark to be annulled.

Does registration on the register mean the right is unchallengeable? No. Registration happens without a contest between the parties, and a descriptive mark can end up on the Supplemental Register with weak protection. Challenging such a mark is markedly easier than one from the Principal Register.

This material was prepared by the Futura Digital team. It's an informational overview, not legal advice: trademarks apply by jurisdiction and the status of specific cases changes, so your project needs a separate check.