Watch Dogs was set to be one of the most anticipated games to come out last year, unfortunately just a month before its scheduled release, the game was delayed. Since then, there have been a lot of rumours flying around about the state of the game- as you can imagine, Ubisoft seemingly filing to abandon the Watch Dogs Trademark didn't help.
Recently, Gamestop began contacting customers who had pre-ordered the Wii U version of the game to tell them that it was no longer coming to the struggling platform, later the company backtracked but interestingly, Ubisoft has yet to comment on the situation. This news caused up quite a stir and it seems that someone out there wanted to make a bigger mess by sending a fraudulent request on Ubisoft's behalf, to abandon the Watch Dogs trademark:
“On February 1, 2014, Ubisoft Entertainment received an email from [email protected] notifying Ubisoft Entertainment that a Request for Express Abandonment had been filed in connection with Application Serial No. 85642398, the Request for Express Abandonment purports to be signed by the Chief Executive Officer of Ubisoft Entertainment, Yves Guillemot.”
Fortunatley, whoever sent in the request left out Ubisoft CEO, Yves Guillemot's signature: “Mr. Guillemot, however, did not sign the Request for Express Abandonment, nor did Ubisoft Entertainment file the Request for Express Abandonment. The Request for Express Abandonment is fraudulent and was not filed by Ubisoft Entertainment or its representative.”
An Ubisoft representative told Polygon that this move will have no impact on development of the game: “We are working directly with the USPTO on reinstating the trademark for Watch Dogs and it will be active again in the coming days. The matter has no impact on the Watch Dogs‘ development.”
KitGuru Says: We've seen fake Trademark filings before but fake abandoning's are new, hopefully this doesn't become commonplace for highly anticipated upcoming games.