The 115-Year Trademark War Over a Game Everyone Knows

There is a game that has existed since 1909. You have played it. Your parents played it. Your grandparents might have played it. It lives in arcades and boardwalks and, increasingly, in bars. You roll a ball up a ramp, it flies off a little hump, and you try to land it in one of the scoring rings on the backboard. The higher up the board, the more points. The corner pockets at the top are worth the most and almost impossible to hit consistently.

You know what this game is called. I know what this game is called. But I'm not supposed to say it, because the name is trademarked, and the history of what's happened to people who used that name is a story worth telling.

This is not a story about one company being a villain. It's a story about two different companies, at two different times, making two different legal decisions about one word. And it's the story that inspired the game I'm building.

The word

The game was invented in 1908 by Joseph Fourestier Simpson in Vineland, New Jersey. He got a patent for it that December. By early 1909, the Skee-Ball Alley Company was marketing 32-foot versions of the game on the Atlantic City boardwalk. The name came from skiing. The ball "skees" off the ramp the way a ski jumper launches off a bump. A 1909 Popular Mechanics article explained it that way.

The name was trademarked in 1929 by the National Skee-Ball Company out of Coney Island. It has been continuously registered ever since. That's 97 years of unbroken trademark protection, which makes it one of the oldest active trademarks in American entertainment.

The game changed hands several times. Wurlitzer bought it in 1936. Philadelphia Toboggan Company took over in 1946. Skee-Ball Inc. spun off from PTC in 1977. Joe Sladek bought the company in the 1980s and eventually renamed it Skee-Ball Amusement Games Inc. Through all of this, the trademark stayed attached to whoever owned the machines.

Here's the thing nobody thinks about: the word and the game became the same thing. There is no generic term for this game. Try to describe it without using the name. "Ball rolling ramp hole points game" is not a real description. "Alley roller" is the technical industry term, but nobody outside the manufacturing world has ever used it. If someone asks you what game you're playing and you can't say the name, you just have to act it out.

This is the core of everything that followed. Is this word a brand name, or is it just what the game is called?

The handshake

In 2005, Eric Pavony had an idea. He'd been playing the game at Coney Island and thought: what if we put these machines in bars and made a competitive league? Beer and the game that shall not be named. He called it Brewskee-Ball.

Before launching, Pavony says he met with Joe Sladek, the CEO of Skee-Ball Inc., at the company's headquarters outside Philadelphia. According to Pavony, in interviews he's given to NPR, CBS, the Austin Chronicle, and others, Sladek gave him verbal permission to use the name. "He gave us his full blessing to start the league and he kind of chuckled when we said, 'Hey, can we call it Brewskee-Ball?'" Pavony told NPR in 2014. "He said, 'Yeah, of course.' We shook on it."

No paper was signed. No written agreement was created.

Sladek later acknowledged the meeting under oath. But what exactly was agreed to became the subject of very expensive disagreement.

The league takes off

Brewskee-Ball started at Ace Bar in Manhattan's East Village. Within a few years it expanded to Brooklyn, Austin, San Francisco, and Wilmington, North Carolina. Pavony opened Full Circle Bar in Williamsburg in 2009 as the "National Home of Brewskee-Ball." The league developed its own terminology. A "full circle" was hitting the 40-point pocket with all nine balls (360 points). A "hundo" was the 100-point shot. They held national championships. They called their seasons "skeesons."

The media loved it. NPR did a feature. ESPN showed up at Full Circle Bar to film a segment on competitive throwing technique. The New York Times profiled the league. The Los Angeles Times wrote about it. It was covered as a feel-good story about adults taking a childhood game seriously in the best possible way.

In 2008, Full Circle United (Pavony's company) registered the BREWSKEE-BALL trademark with the US Patent and Trademark Office. It was approved.

During this entire growth period, from 2005 to 2010, Skee-Ball Inc. said nothing.

Skee-Ball Inc. sues (Lawsuit #1)

In 2010, after the national press coverage, Skee-Ball Inc.'s representatives sent an email asking questions about the league. Shortly after, their lawyer sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding the league stop using the name Brewskee-Ball.

When the league didn't comply, Skee-Ball Inc. filed a lawsuit.

In October 2011, Skee-Ball Inc. sued Full Circle United in the Northern District of California for trademark infringement, dilution, and unfair competition. A month later, Full Circle counter-sued in the Southern District of New York, seeking to have the trademark canceled entirely on the grounds that the word is generic.

It's worth understanding Skee-Ball Inc.'s position here. This was a small Pennsylvania company that had owned a trademark since the 1980s. Trademark law actually requires owners to enforce their marks or risk losing them. If Skee-Ball Inc. let Brewskee-Ball operate without challenge, a court could eventually rule the word generic and anyone could use it. From their perspective, they weren't being aggressive. They were doing what the law says you have to do to protect your trademark.

"There's no other word"

Brewskee-Ball's legal team was Fish & Richardson, a major intellectual property law firm. Their primary argument was straightforward: the word is generic. It's not a brand name anymore. It's just what everyone calls the game. You can't trademark a word that IS the thing.

"There's no other word to describe Skee-Ball other than Skee-Ball," their attorney told NPR.

Pavony made the same point in his own way: "I don't know, a ramp-based ring toss game for kids with balls? It's funny, right? But it's actually not because it's cost us a ton of money to fight this thing already and we haven't even gone to trial yet."

Pavony launched a crowdfunding campaign called "Skee the People" on RocketHub, hoping to raise $100,000 for legal fees. The league's Twitter background read in graffiti font: "THERE'S NO WAY TO SAY SKEE BALL EXCEPT SKEE BALL."

Both sides had a point. That's what made it drag on for years.

The settlement

The first lawsuit settled in 2014. Full Circle received a limited license agreement granting narrow rights to use the trademark in connection with "Live Play," defined as live leagues, teams, events, and tournaments using official machines manufactured by Skee-Ball Inc.

This is an important detail that often gets lost in the retelling. Some sources describe this as Brewskee-Ball winning. They didn't win. They settled for a license that let them keep operating under specific restrictions. The trademark remained valid and enforceable. Skee-Ball Inc. maintained ownership.

This is where the first chapter ends. Skee-Ball Inc. enforced their trademark. Brewskee-Ball got a license to keep operating. Both sides moved on.

Then the whole landscape changed.

Bay Tek enters (a different company, a different story)

In February 2016, a completely different company entered the picture. Bay Tek Games, Inc., out of Pulaski, Wisconsin, acquired Skee-Ball Inc. This included the trademark, all associated rights, and the license agreement with Full Circle.

Bay Tek is a bigger operation than Skee-Ball Inc. was. They manufacture coin-operated amusement equipment and specialize in ticket and prize redemption games. After the acquisition, they moved aggressively to expand the brand beyond physical machines. They signed licensing deals with Ocean Media for a mobile app, with Zynga for social gaming, with Running Press for desktop games, with Bally Technologies for slot machines, and with Alchemy3 for lottery ticket games.

In March 2017, Bay Tek filed a new trademark registration specifically covering computer game software for personal computers, home video game consoles, and mobile phones. This is the registration that's directly relevant to anyone trying to make a video game about this sport.

Bay Tek also announced a partnership with Full Circle to develop exclusive leagues and tournaments, with Full Circle managing them under the Brewskee-Ball trademark.

For a moment, it looked like a fresh start. A new corporate owner, a licensing partnership, everyone working together.

The partnership collapses (Lawsuit #2)

It didn't last.

On July 28, 2020, Full Circle United sued Bay Tek Entertainment in the Eastern District of New York. The claims: breach of contract, breach of an alleged revenue share agreement, and tortious interference.

Bay Tek countersued for breach of the license agreement, trademark infringement, false endorsement, and common law unfair competition.

This is a completely different dispute from the first lawsuit. The first lawsuit was about whether Brewskee-Ball could use the word at all. The second lawsuit is a contract dispute between business partners whose relationship broke down. Different company, different claims, different context.

The case has been grinding through federal court for over five years under Judge Brian M. Cogan. There have been summary judgment motions, discovery disputes, evidentiary hearings, and a 54-page memorandum of law from Bay Tek's legal team. As of early 2025, the case was headed to jury trial.

The full picture

Two different companies. Two different lawsuits. One word.

Skee-Ball Inc. sued because trademark law required them to protect a mark they'd held for decades. That case settled with a license agreement. You can understand their reasoning even if you think the outcome was harsh.

Bay Tek inherited the trademark, partnered with Full Circle, and then that partnership fell apart into its own litigation. That's a different kind of story. A business relationship that didn't work out.

Neither company is a cartoon villain. Both were operating within the legal system as it exists. But the combined result is that one word, a word that describes a game everyone has played since childhood, has been the subject of over a decade of federal litigation.

And that result is genuinely, beautifully absurd.

Why this matters to me

I work on the actual machines. I work on Bay Tek machines among others, and they make great games and have good documentation. I love this game the same way Pavony loves it, the same way the hundreds of league players in Brooklyn and Austin and San Francisco love it. The game has been around for 115 years. It's part of American recreational culture in a way that very few things are.

And you can't say its name without navigating a legal minefield.

That situation is what inspired DONT SAY SKEEBALL. The game I'm building isn't a retelling of the Brewskee-Ball saga. It's a roguelite with deep systems, real physics, and a character named Dave who runs an underground tournament and can't figure out how to describe the game without saying the word.

But the emotional truth is the same: loving something you're not allowed to name.

The fictional corporation in the game is called Boy Tak Games, Inc. The veil is thin on purpose. Dave even acknowledges it: "I mean, I get it, dude. They gotta protect their brand or whatever. I just wish they'd let us say... you know... the word."

That's the tone of the whole game. Not angry. Not combative. Just a guy who wishes he could say the word. I understand why trademark holders protect their marks. The law requires it. The system is working as designed.

It's just that the system, when applied to a word that everyone already uses to describe a game that's been around since 1909, produces results that are beautifully, absurdly, perfectly suited to becoming a video game.

Sources

Everything in this post comes from publicly available reporting and court documents:

• NPR, "Brewskee-Ball Founders Refuse To Be Sidelined By Trademark Case," Joel Rose, May 6, 2014

• NPR, "In New York City, Skee-Ball For Grown-Ups," February 18, 2010

• CBS Philadelphia, "In Federal Court (No Kidding): Skee-Ball vs. Brewskee-Ball," May 8, 2014

• Austin Chronicle, "Brewskee! Tears, Cheers, and Beers," May 23, 2014

• Full Circle United v. Bay Tek Entertainment (1:20-cv-03395, E.D.N.Y.), court filings available on CourtListener and PACER

• Bay Tek Entertainment motion for summary judgment, Document 150, December 23, 2022

• Justia Trademarks, SKEE-BALL Registration #5429760 (Serial #87377609)

DONT SAY SKEEBALL is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or associated with Bay Tek Entertainment, Inc. or the SKEE-BALL brand. This is a work of parody and commentary.