CoN 25th Anniversary: 1997-2022
Square Enix Registers Shinra Company Trademark

Posted: 20th February 2014 17:27

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Square Enix has registered "Shinra Company" as a trademark specifically for use with video games. After all this time, and with no remake on the horizon, could we be looking at another spin off here? Could the trademark be used somehow for the upcoming Kingdom Hearts 3? Today's news correspondent, fatman, puts his weight (ha!) behind the former, as Square has seen some success with releasing Final Fantasy VII on Steam and PlayStation Network, and no doubt all the recent sales have been lucrative. The time might be right for another continuation of the universe to reach the new and revived players recently brought into the fold.

Source: CVG, siliconera
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Posted: 20th February 2014 17:38

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Black Waltz
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I would like to take this thread into ridiculous speculation mode by postulating that SE have been the Shinra all along.

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Posted: 22nd February 2014 06:44

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Red Wing Pilot
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Couldn't find the trademark on the USPTO website, then checked your links and saw the registration was done in Japan.

Not sure how similar Japanese trademark is to the U.S., but the laws are relatively uniform across the globe these days due to various treaties. Trademarks need to be an identifier of a source for goods or services, like a title or brand name. So, for instance, Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger are both trademarks owned by Square. "Sephiroth" is not because, popular as that character is, he's never been used for branding purposes on any of their products (as a fictional character he would be protected instead by copyright).

That they have now chosen to trademark the name leads me to believe that they are indeed planning to make some sort of game with "Shin-Ra" in the title. If I had to take a wild guess, it's probably a cell phone game for the Japanese market.

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Posted: 22nd February 2014 16:48

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Dude on a Walrus
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Quote (MetroidMorphBall @ 22nd February 2014 01:44)
That they have now chosen to trademark the name leads me to believe that they are indeed planning to make some sort of game with "Shin-Ra" in the title. If I had to take a wild guess, it's probably a cell phone game for the Japanese market.

Sadly, I think your guess is far more likely than something more exciting. And you can take "something more exciting" to mean whatever you want it to mean.

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Posted: 26th February 2014 02:33

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LOGO ZE SHOOPUF
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Quote (laszlow @ 22nd February 2014 12:48)
Quote (MetroidMorphBall @ 22nd February 2014 01:44)
That they have now chosen to trademark the name leads me to believe that they are indeed planning to make some sort of game with "Shin-Ra" in the title.  If I had to take a wild guess, it's probably a cell phone game for the Japanese market.

Sadly, I think your guess is far more likely than something more exciting. And you can take "something more exciting" to mean whatever you want it to mean.

Yeah, I'd say MMB has a pretty spot-on guess. A larger game in the FFVII universe would have a distinctive name of some sort. Something small and, let's face it, gimmicky in nature would be just the thing to have 'Shinra' as its main name.

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