Sheep Raiders (羊了个羊), the infamous indie black horse rocketing to top of the Wechat game rankings this week, had stirred much controversy among netizens of China. The game, known for its prank of hellish difficulty on the second level, had once again plundered unimaginable attention, followed by huge profit, thanks to the irrational yet infectious memes of the cyberworld. Critics now focus on possible IPR disputes it will have to face as a result of the unworthy popularity. 

As gamers began to murmur about the similarities in both the mechanism and interface between Sheep Raiders and the classic puzzle "3tiles", developers found they were already risking scandal for copycat. 

In this regard, Beijing Jianyou Technology Co., Ltd., the affiliated company of the developer, denied all accusations of mimicing other games. Jianyou company has, to this date, successfully applied for two registrations of trademark, and eleven applications of software copyrights, making it the legitimate owner of the game published on June 13 and gaining copyright over the title of Sheep Raiders on July 29. 

On September 9, 2022, Jianyou company submitted trademark registrations of Class 35 and Class 41. Perhaps the team never expect the shoddy work would turn out to be a huge black horse, they never prepared any distribution work from the beginning of the development, but only rushed into layout with merely two registrations when profits began to soar. A remedial rescue in the eyes of IP practitioners though, the scarcity of registration numbers for such a hot issue, plus the unhandy delay in the timing of registration, had both reflected the lack of foresight of the developers in China when it comes to trademark layout strategy.