Sony “Abandons” The Last Guardian Trademark

[drop2]This is interesting. According to reports emerging, Sony has abandoned the US trademark for the long in development Team Ico game The Last Guardian.

“Abandonment Notice!” says Trademarkia. “On Monday, August 6, 2012, status on the THE LAST GUARDIAN trademark changed to ABANDONED – NO STATEMENT OF USE FILED.”

Fancy the name for yourself? “Apply Now starting at $159!” advertises the site. Not a bad price at all, all things considered.

Hopefully this is just a change of name for a game that has had some poor news of late – you do need to show that a trademark will be used commercially in order to keep it.

Either that or someone forgot to renew it.

Rumours abound that – assuming The Last Guardian isn’t dead completely – development has been moved to PS4.

Update: Some further clarification is useful here. Sony filed an “Intent to Use” application for the trademark, which you can do as a way of ensuring that you won’t be beaten to the use of it after investing in a project. But the Intent to Use file expires, a measure in place to avoid people squatting on trademarks.

Sony has filed multiple extension applications for this one and the hope is that they just didn’t quite get this latest extension application in on time. Let’s all take a deep breath, cross our fingers and hope that they’re just a bit pre-occupied with putting together lots of awesome reveals for Gamescom next week, eh?

19 Comments

  1. It’ll be a shame if this is how such an eagerly anticipated games ends…. As others have said – fingers crossed.

  2. Maybe saving it for next gen :P

  3. Hm… more bad news that the game doesn’t really need. They’ve been to quiet about it, maybe they will cancel.. maybe but I don’t think they will do such a thing its too much of an project I suppose.

    Hope they get it released some time, least it won’t be bad as Duke Nukem its still odd that The Last Guardian is taking soo long.

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