The company recently trademarked the word in Europe with regard to software and gaming, but they’re swearing up and down that it’s only for defensive use. The idea, according to CD Projekt Red, is to keep people from making their own game and titling it ‘Cyberpunk’ in a way that makes it look like it’ll be a sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, which is of course is a hotly-anticipated game at this point. As the Geeks Are Sexy notes: “It turned out that CD Prokect Red has already held a US trademark on the term since 2012, something that’s strengthened its argument that it doesn’t plan to use the term aggressively, for example by trying to stop any games with a cyberpunk theme.”
Personally, I think that it’s going to be OK. CD Projekt Red doesn’t seem to have very many idiots working for it, and you’d have to be an idiot to start an unnecessary trademark war with your most likely customers. But you have to expect that people will seize on any little scrap of information that they see when you won’t, you know, SHOW THEM THE GAME OR ANYTHING…
So, Honest question: If you trademark something like “Cyberpunk” does that mean you do or do not get the rights to Cyperpunk 2 or 8 (the Ocho!)?
As I understand it, the trademark forbids you from using Cyberpunk in the videogame title without permission. So you can call something ‘cyberpunk’ in the description, but you can’t call the game itself ‘Cyberpunk.’ There have been companies who have been aggressive about the parameters of this sort of thing in the past, which is why people were worried.
Someone noted this earlier today on the Mekton Zeta Mailing List that I’m a part of. Another list member quipped that the reason why we haven’t seen anything related to the game for quite a while is because Mike Pondsmith (owner of R Talsorian Games, maker of the pencil and paper Cyberpunk RPG) is involved with it.
😛