A year or two ago Liberty Ammunition came out their 50gr solid Halo load with the distinctive “Halo Point” box. This was another super-bullet load rated at 2000fps. Recently I noticed that they were offering what appeared to be an identical load, but now named USM4. When I asked around, I learned that Microsoft apparently filed a copyright suit against Liberty over the Halo logo. It seems that the Liberty box uses an identical copy of the Halo logo used by the microsoft game “HALO Nation”, a game of space warfare. the game has its own ammunition: http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Ammunition.
Attached are photos of both boxes and both cartridges. The Halo loads have “RWS 9mm Luger” headstamps and the USM4 loads have “9X19SRA4 DAG10BO851” headstamps, both nickel-plated cases. Most of the Halo loads had a dark finish inside the HP, but a few were silver inside. The USM4 loads also have a mix of bullets with dark and silver/Ni finish inside the HP.
I was surprised that Liberty used the Microsoft copyrighted name. They marked it as registered, and I wonder if they thought they had some sort of agreement with Microsoft.
Perhaps one of you know more of this story. If so please share it.
Cheers,
Lew