Trademark isn't about people making clones of your game. In this case Trademark is about people confusing the title of your game with another game because they use the same name.

Trademarking "Candy Crush Saga" makes sense because that's the full name of the game and is not a common word or phrase.

Trademarking "Candy" is absurd. This means any game that has the world candy in it is suddenly subject to litigation by King. Candy is a common word, and I could have a game called Unicorn Candy Attack and clearly that's not going to cause confusion with Candy Crush Saga.

Who is complaining about the Flappy Bird clones? If the creator hadn't pulled the app, he still would have been printing out money for the foreseeable future, so I doubt he's enraged about people profiting from the idea. Out of those thousands of clones, the new winner won't be the app that carbon copies Flappy Bird most effectively, it's going to be an app that builds on the idea. If King.com, with their newfound millions, can't build a superior product to some poser "Sweets Smash Story", then they don't deserve to stay on top of the App Charts.

As far as I have seen, the only people who have complained about flappy clones have actually just complained that flappy clones are 'trending', not that clones are made. In other words, they are just annoyed by being bombarded by clone after clone.

there's a big difference between cloning the likeness of an entire game vs. having a game that bares no resemblance to another game other than the name of it...

You mean like "All Candy Casino Slots – Jewel Craze Connect: Big Blast Mania Land"?

ooh, looks like they replaced 'candy' with 'sugar': https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/all-sugar-casino-slots-jewel...

My new game "Cut the Flappy Candy Saga-ville" will be coming to the market soon... it's just a calculator with banner ads.