by JR Cook - 7 years ago     show comments

So if you’ve been goofing off online on Reddit, MMO-Champion forums, Twitter, or even listening to your favorite podcasts (either Hearthstone or WoW related) – you have probably heard that Return of the Lich King has been trademarked by Blizzard and there are a lot of people speculating if that means we’re looking at a WoW or a Hearthstone expansion.

However, has Return of the Lich King really been trademarked?

Well, first of all – any search on the USPTO database brings up nothing. If you go and do some searches with some other countries where Blizzard has trademarked things in the past early such as Australia and Swaziland, once again brings up nothing. However, Swaziland does not keep their trademark database online. Theoretically though Blizzard could trademark in any country that has signed an intellectual property agreement and then carry that over into the US when they’re ready to announce.

Even doing a search across other countries beyond this, Return of the Lich King is not trademarked anywhere and is still up for grabs so to speak.

However, the problem is, there has been no mention in where exactly this trademark exists or proof that it does.

This all recently roared to attention on /r/hearthstone recently with this thread from the guy claiming that Blizzard has trademarked Return of the Lich King and was going through some “proof” on why he thinks it’s the next Hearthstone expansion. He actually has good reasons on why the next expansion could very well be themed around Death Knights, but his source for Return of the Lich King being trademarked was another Reddit thread in /r/wow.

The /r/wow thread simply was titled “Blizzard Trademarked “Return of the Lich King” 3 days ago” with the post saying “Thoughts? Someone on MMO-Champion posted about it”.

However, the earliest post on MMO-Champion talking about the thread was a couple days later pointing to the /r/wow thread.

This following image is a classic example of what we are seeing here when trying to find the source of the trademark filing:

With all of this said, I have not seen an actual public filing of a trademark for ANY Hearthstone expansions. It appears StarCraft, Diablo, and WoW all trademark their expansion names over on the USPTO database, but if you do a search for any Hearthstone expansion names, nothing. So even if Blizzard happened to trademark the name somewhere, it’s doubtful it is a Hearthstone expansion name.

As for the GoDaddy URL filing, literally anyone can do that under any name they wish on GoDaddy.

Unless someone can provide credible proof that “Return of the Lich King” is trademarked by Blizzard, this entire thing appears to just be a made up story from Reddit that has gotten out of control.

Content creators/influencers – please do your homework before you continue circulating this.