BREAKING NEWS: EA Files for New Wing Commander Trademark (August 11, 2009)

BluesNews is reporting that Electronic Arts has filed a new trademark registration for Wing Commander (as well as Populous, Theme Park and Road Rash). You can find the filing status/information here.

EA already holds the copyright to the Wing Commander IP, which gives the company long-term ownership of the series as a whole. Unlike copyrights, trademarks specifically guarantee the right to sell a product under a particular name. Trademarks must be reregistered regularly alongside proof that they are in active use.

The "Wing Commander" trademark was first registered by Electronic Arts in 1992, following their acquisition of Origin Systems. They renewed the trademark as required in 2002 -- which would ordinarily maintain it through 2012, indicating that today's application is of an irregular nature. In short, it's not proof that a Wing Commander relaunch is in the works... but it is a very positive sign.

Jetlag has put together a fascinating collection of scans of the original trademark filing and updates, which is available here (5 MB). (This does not include the new request.)

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Original update published on August 11, 2009

Nice! Crossing fingers...

It's not necessarily anything, but it's more than possible that this is really good news. They weren't actively releasing anything from summer 1999 through 2002 either (when conventional wisdom was that a new game was most likely a couple years after the last major release), but didn't feel the need to preemptively renew then.

I'm not understanding what you're trying to say here. The makers of Prophecy Advance, WC Arena and Star*Soldier *heavily* consulted fans from the CIC during production. The same goes for multiple projects that never came to fruition, and there's no reason to believe the same wouldn't be true for the next WC game.

I just wondered if this might have something to do with LucasArts thinking out load about doing another X-Wing/Tie-Fighter game.
Kinda like EA saying "Starwars has a pretty big fanbase that would most likely buy it. Makeing the genre more well known again. If they are successfull we do a WC game to take the wave of new spacesims that will follow. If they fail, well we would have to renew the TM anyway."

It's an interesting thought and it would be entirely appropriate (X-Wing itself was the product of Lucasarts turning down Origin's request to license Star Wars, seeing the Wing Commander I demo when it was unveiled at a trade show and then quickly printing up X-WING COMING SOON signs to display at their booths the next morning.)

But the times don't really match; the 'no announcement... yet' X-Wing story was the same day the Trademark started processing the request. Just putting together the petition takes some time (check out the 30-odd page original bundle of legal documents, citations, etc. that we included in the story above)... and while Electronic Arts could theoretically decide that that comment about X-Wing was so important that they needed to have their lawyers reregister their Wing Commander trademark *immediately* (and Road Rash and Theme Park?), government bureaucracy moves at a glacial pace.

(I'm hearing, by the way, that the "X-Wing" concept floating around is more along the lines of Rebel Assault; no carefully crafted Larry Holland space simulator yet.)

Mh I haven't taken into account the time. Most news don't get to me in time. For example the LA rumor is now 2-3 weeks old while this is just a few days.

Anyway one can only wish that both would have a more old school title again. No Arena or Rebel Assault type game but the good WC and X-Wing kind of gameplay.

Wing Commander returning to form is a lot more likely than X-Wing; underneath all the cinematic coating and the layers of engagement-oriented details, Wing Commander is a pretty simple arcade game (or - a first person shooter without a floor...).

X-Wing was something else entirely;it's a /reaction/ to what Wing Commander was -- Holland must have known he could copy Wing Commander exactly and be done with it (the things that make Wing Commander great are, after all, taken right from Star Wars). Instead he created a game that has seems similar but is actually designed around everything Wing Commander isn't -- it's slow, avoids storytelling, is strategic instead of twitch-based and so forth. You can sell Wing Commander's action oriented gameplay today, I'd bet my fortune on it... but I don't know if anyone would buy X-Wing 2.

I would buy a X-Wing2 ^_^

Thats a bit beside the point I know. I agree that the original X-Wing wasn't good at telling a story but personaly I didn't missed it that much because I know most of the stuff from the movie, so I kinda took that as the story presentation.

Newer titels like Tie-Fighter but at least X-Wing Alliance showed that they can tell a story and for most parts maintain the old flight/mission model.

Sure the flightmodel of X-Wing/Tie-Fighter isn't that much action oriantated as WCP/SO. Its sitll a challange. On the perspective if that would still sell? I doubt that it would sell as strong as back in the days when it was all shine and new.
The heavy oriantation on action in todays titles is more appealing to the kids who have grown up with it.
Still I think that, thanks to its pretty big fandom, it could sell as good as a WC game that has, as far as I would guess, not such a big fandom. A strong one but just not the size.

From a personal level I would still prefere the slower flying model of X-Wing-Alliance or WC 1-4 over these high speed shooter.
A point why I still prefere WC 1-4 over Prophecy as I fellt they where just a tad slower. Prophecy was overcrowded and fast.
Ah kids just like it like that...man I fell old now ^_^