Activision could be abandoning plans to develop a Call of Duty: Secret Warfare title, as well as other Call of Duty games, according to the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Monday July 11 marked the abandonment date.
According to the USPTO, the trademark application was abandoned because no ‘Statement of Use’ or ‘Extension Request’ was filed after the ‘Notice of Allowance’ (NOA) was issued back in December 2010.
Activision hinted at plans of developing any one of a number of new titles for its Call of Duty franchise last May, after the company registered a slew of domain names and filed several trademark applications.
The ‘Secret Warfare’ trademark application is the first, in what may likely be a series of abandoned trademark applications to follow, as the game publisher focuses on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 set to release in November 2011.
The other ‘Call of Duty’ trademark applications, all filed by Activision Publishing on May 11, 2010, just had their NOA issued, therefore the company has six months from today, to use the mark in commerce and submit a Statement of Use or request an extension.
Or, as in the case of ‘Secret Warfare’, abandon the application altogether.
For disappointed Call of Duty fans, don’t rule out a Secret Warfare title just yet. Activision still has a ‘live’ application submitted for CALL OF DUTY SECRET WARFARE, as shown below.
CALL OF DUTY ADVANCED WARFARE [Serial Number: 85035848]
CALL OF DUTY FUTURE WARFARE [Serial Number: 85035853]
CALL OF DUTY SECRET WARFARE [Serial Number: 85035859]
CALL OF DUTY SPACE WARFARE [Serial Number: 85035865]
FUTURE WARFARE [Serial Number: 85035869]
SPACE WARFARE [Serial Number: 85035875]