Firm Gets Sole Rights to Use of <i> Pog</i>

The World Pog Federation of Costa Mesa has won exclusive rights to use the word pog on its disks and other game products under an agreement announced this week, after a months-long legal dispute. The Huntington Beach-based Universal Pogs Assn., which had claimed pog was a generic term for the wafer-like game pieces, will change its name to Universal Slammers Inc. and will no longer call its caps pogs. The Hawaiian sidewalk game has caught on in California and other states and is growing into a multimillion-dollar industry. In the game, players hit lightweight cardboard disks with a metal or plastic “slammer.” A player gets a point for each opponents’ piece that is flipped over, or gets to keep the piece. The WPF had claimed exclusive rights to pog because of an agreement with Haleakala Dairy on Maui, which owns 14% of the federation. The dairy coined the term when it began stamping POG on the caps of bottles containing its blend of passion fruit, orange and guava juices. Terms of the deal were confidential. The agreement makes permanent a temporary injunction issued by Superior Court.