Sony's US Bloodborne trademark expired on launch day

Sony has been forced to re-apply for its US trademark on Bloodborne and a number of other titles after they lapsed thanks to an administrative error.

Five trademarks all lapsed on March 23rd thanks to the expiration of a six-month period after which the onus was on Sony to prove that they were being used productively, when the company failed to do so a reminder letter was sent. There's not expected to be any opposition to their re-registering, with the company having promptly filed paperwork establishing that the lapse was unintentional.

Four games and one other trademark expired on the same day, with Guns Up, No Heroes Allowed: No Puzzles Either and Kill Strain joining Bloodborne and headphone trademark How Games Were Made to Sound on the embarrassing list. Looking at the documents filed with the US patent office, the contact name and email address for the process at Sony has been changed from one Kiphanie Radford to Lindsey Mohle and Anthony Justman, with trademarks@playstation.sony.com just in case. Radford's LinkedIn page lists her as having left Sony for a new job last year, so it would appear that the slip came down to nobody picking up her workload.

Whilst this sort of admin error is all but inevitable in a company of Sony's size, it comes at a particularly awkward time for Bloodborne, which released to great acclaim in the US yesterday.

Recently, Sony also accidentally abandoned the trademark for The Last Guardian in the same way, prompting more speculation that development on the game had ceased. However, the application was renewed and Sony insists that the game will still see release.