Watch Dogs trademark abandoned by Ubisoft

Written by Brandon Hofer on February 03, 2014

News: Ubisoft has abandoned the trademark for Watch Dogs leaving the future of the game unclear.

UPDATE #2: Ubisoft PR has responded to our request for comment with the following statement:

"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."

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UPDATE: Ubisoft Montreal's twitter has stated that Watch Dogs is still in development as you can see by the image below:

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Original story: Watch Dogs is a game that people have really been looking forward to ever since it made its debut during Ubisoft’s press conference at E3 2012. It has already gone through one delay and still doesn’t have a firm release date. All we know is that Watch Dogs is supposed to come out sometime in the Spring. For those who are eagerly awaiting Watch Dogs though there is some potentially bad news that has just surfaced. According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Ubisoft has filed for an “express abandonment” of the Watch Dogs trademark. The full status is, “Abandoned after publication because applicant filed an express abandonment.”

Watch Dogs was originally slated to come out last fall for Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii U and would have served as a major launch title for both the PS4 and Xbox One. Watch Dogs ended up getting delayed and while that was disappointing, it was seen as a good move since Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag was already out and Ubisoft didn’t want to risk competing against itself by releasing two open world games at the same time. According to the USPTO, the trademark was abandoned this past Saturday on February 1. The request for express abandonment was signed by Yves Guillemot who is the CEO for Ubisoft.

What exactly does this mean for Watch Dogs? There seems to be one of two possibilities. The first possibility is that maybe Watch Dogs is getting rebranded. This doesn’t seem very likely as Ubisoft has spent the last year and a half or so marketing this game under the Watch Dogs label. All of the excitement is surrounding Watch Dogs and if it was to suddenly be called something else the hype would almost assuredly disappear as quickly as the Watch Dogs name itself. I’m sure some of the more hardcore gamers who follow the industry closely would follow Watch Dogs wherever it went but the general public would have no clue. Watch Dogs is a game that was featured during “Video Game Week” on Jimmy Fallon so it has been introduced to the general public. If the game is indeed getting rebranded then you can almost certainly rule out a release in the Spring as Ubisoft would want to try and hype up the game under its new moniker. One would assume they wouldn’t simply release it under a name no one knows and hope for the best.

The second possibility is that Watch Dogs might just be altogether cancelled. It has been delayed in the past so that Ubisoft could give it that extra layer of polish, however, maybe Watch Dogs was in more trouble than we ever realized. The general assumption was one of the reasons Watch Dogs was delayed (in addition to it needing more polish) is that Ubisoft didn’t want to release two open world games at the same time with Assassin’s Creed IV having been released a few weeks earlier. Perhaps the internal team and management at Ubisoft aren’t happy with where Watch Dogs was heading and decided to cut their losses. In recent times Ubisoft is a company that is not afraid to cancel a game if it isn’t living up to their expectations and Watch Dogs might be the latest casualty.

This is, of course, all speculation. This might not mean anything at all but I doubt it. There hasn’t been any official announcement from Ubisoft regarding this matter, however, we have contacted them to see if we can get any kind of statement regarding the future of Watch Dogs. If we happen to receive a response from Ubisoft we will be sure to update this story. What do you think is happening here? Are they rebranding Watch Dogs or are they just cutting their losses and focusing on their other projects? Tell us what you think below.