We began the podcast series around January of 2007, having put it into development in 2006. In fact, the earliest of the stories in my files is 4/2006, followed by the second at 5/2006. Dates on the website are inconsistent because the website was wiped and rebooted after we went to a more robust provider, and because the earliest stories are slowly being re-recorded and replaced.
Until that time, the game had been called Cabal, which is a far more appropriate name for it. Suddenly, out of nowhere, after we had gotten quite a lot of positive reviews for our podcast series, they abruptly change the name to "The Secret World" and get a trademark. I hardly think this is a coincidence. One of the original writers, Steve Libby, was extremely upset by the announcement at the time, but at that point there was nothing we could do except curse ourselves for not getting the trademark ourselves, and take comfort in the fact that we could prove prior use if they decided to throw a lawyer at us.
As if that wasn't bad enough, after we had been finalists for several years running for the podcast, they name their vault system "The Secret World Chronicle", which is identical to the name of our series. A vault system? Named a "chronicle"? That makes absolutely zero sense--unless they were trying further to capitalize on our success.
Happy now?