Sony’s “Let’s Play” Trademark Application Denied For A Second Time

Not too long ago, Sony attempted to trademark the term “Let’s Play,” but protests from the gaming community and a USA law firm are deterring the company.

The McArthur Law Firm said this latest rejection is “far more lethal” to Sony than the USPTO’s previous rejection. This phrase merely describes applicant’s services because applicant would stream “let’s play” videos.

While the exact details regarding what Sony meant by registering the popular term were unknown, they apparently were attempting to trademark the activities of playing and streaming games online.

Sony still has six months to challenge the ruling, although it’s pretty unlikely that it’ll attempt to, especially in light of this updated rejection.

Since nobody has heard of that phrase, or the company responsible for it, the more serious obstacle to Sony’s plans is that the trademark office has now been made aware of just how generic and widely used the phrase is. “To support its rejection, the [United States Patent and Trademark Office] evidence consisted entirely of the first two sources included in our Letter of Protest: the Wikipedia page for Let’s Play and the /r/letsplay subreddit”.

Stephen McArthur, an attorney who spends his time counseling clients on trademark and copyright issues in the video game industry, told Motherboard that this would have been an easy concern for Sony to address because the “LP Let’z Play” trademark was abandoned.

The law firm also notes that based on this, it is likely that Sony will not be able to work around the rejection.

However, those with a relatively normal amount of knowledge on the matter wondered why it wasn’t denied on the grounds that “Let’s Play” is already an established term used by everyone.