UPDATE: Ubisoft has confirmed to Strategy Informer that it’s working to reinstate the Watch Dogs trademark after a fraudulent Request for Express Abandonment was filed by an unknown source this week.
”We are working directly with the USPTO on reinstating the trademark for Watch Dogs and it will be active again in the coming days. The matter has no impact on the Watch Dogs’ development.” said a spokesperson.
Watch Dogs is safe and sound at Ubisoft, so hopefully we’ll hear about how development is going soon.
Original Story: Ubisoft currently holds six trademarks for Watch Dogs in the US, although in a surprising move today, the publisher has filed an express abandonment for the primary application. This has lead many to believe that Ubisoft will cancel the title, but it could just be that Ubisoft wants to rename it.
Watch Dogs was originally meant to launch on 19th November for PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, but Ubisoft decided to delay the game until spring 2014 and claimed that it was in the ”best interest of the product”.
Shortly after this, Ubisoft’s shares slumped by a massive 26%, but this was also partly due to the delay of The Crew – a next-gen racing game for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
The publisher has already spent a large amount of money on developing Watch Dogs, which has been in production since 2009, so it would be hard to imagine them cancelling their most anticipated IP after Assassin’s Creed.
There’s been talk of them integrating the game into the Assassin’s Creed universe before, which would make sense since that franchise is a well known brand now, but it would be nice to see a new IP from Ubisoft. Perhaps this is all just a simple name change to Watch_Dogs as that is what they’ve been using in their marketing for the game, but we’ll have to wait and see how this develops.
We’re currently trying to get in contact with Ubisoft to see if we can find out why this express abandonment was filed. Stay tuned…
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