Take-Two Is Asserting the Rockstar R Against Other People's R Marks

While most of the attention on Take-Two this month has been on court dockets and SEC filings, the company has been quietly busy somewhere much less glamorous: the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, where it is asserting the Rockstar Games "R" logo against other people's "R" marks. One filing landed inside our window, on 4 September. It is a procedural clock rather than a fight. The more substantial one is nine days older and involves a portfolio of registrations that goes back to 1999. The frame, first Three things to fix in place before any of the detail, because trademark procedure is routinely reported as though it were litigation. An extension of time to oppose is not an opposition. It is a request to stop the clock while you decide whether to file one. Obtaining it commits the requester to precisely nothing. Most extensions expire without anything being filed at all. An opposition is not a lawsuit. It is a contested administrative proceeding before a Board inside the United States Patent and Trademark Office. No damages are available. The Board cannot order anybody to stop using a mark. The only thing at stake is whether the applicant gets a federal registration. Allegations in a notice of opposition are the opposer's allegations. Nothing in either proceeding below has been decided, and nothing below is a finding by anybody about anything. The in-window filing: a 90 day clock, opened and granted the same day CONFIRMED. TTABVUE proceeding 99171880, type Extension of Time, was fetched at 03:04:27 UTC on 9 September 2026, HTTP 200, 27,841 bytes. The database's own snapshot stamp on that page reads, verbatim, "Results as of 09/08/2026 11:04 PM", so everything below reflects the record as of that moment rather than live. The prosecution history is two lines long and reads, verbatim: 2 | 09/04/2026 | EXT GRANTED1 | 09/04/2026 | FIRST 90-DAY REQUEST TO EXT TIME TO OPPOSE Filed and granted on the same day, 4 September 2026. Status: "Extension of Time to Oppose Filed", status date 4 September 2026. Granted To Date: 9 December 2026. The applicant is X-Communicado Inc., whose mark is X-COMMUNICADO under serial number 99171880. The potential opposer is Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. Take-Two's counsel of record is Kelli D. Ortega of Kelley Drye & Warren LLP, 3 World Trade Center, 175 Greenwich Street, New York. The applicant's counsel is Roger H. Bora of Thompson Hine LLP, Miamisburg, Ohio. The Board paralegal on the file is Nicole M. Thier. What Take-Two has bought itself is ninety days to decide. The clock runs to 9 December 2026, which is three weeks after Grand Theft Auto VI ships. It may file an opposition. It may not. The record as it stands says only that it has preserved the option, and preserving options is what trademark counsel are paid to do. The bigger one: fourteen registrations, all of them the letter R CONFIRMED. Opposition 91309921 was fetched at 03:04:27 UTC on 9 September, HTTP 200, 42,356 bytes. Filing date 26 August 2026. Status: Pending. The defendant is Raised On Film LLP, a UK film company, whose mark is simply R under serial number 99510663, now carrying the status "OPPOSITION PENDING". Its counsel is Kenneth F. Florek of Florek & Endres PLLC, New York. Take-Two is the plaintiff, again represented by Kelli D. Ortega of Kelley Drye & Warren. The Board's interlocutory attorney on the file is Tashia A. Bunch, and the paralegal is Lalita R. Webb. The pleaded registrations are the Rockstar Games "R" logo portfolio. Our researcher recorded fourteen properties in all across the search-result and proceeding pages, and captured thirteen serial and registration pairs. We are printing the thirteen we hold and disclosing that the count of properties recorded was fourteen, rather than quietly rounding one direction or the other. Serial 90775249, registration 7287850, mark R Serial 85475008, registration 4216755, mark R Serial 85204405, registration 4034074, mark R Serial 85122117, registration 3992563, mark R Serial 85122037, registration 3950918, mark R Serial 77614900, registration 3843554, mark R Serial 77616981, registration 3695041, mark R Serial 77616894, registration 3631311, mark R Serial 77616897, registration 3619405, mark R Serial 77636344, registration 3616037, mark R Serial 77173249, registration 3351855, mark R Serial 75835094, registration 2391635, mark R Serial 76408131, registration 2855543, mark R ROCKSTAR GAMES Look at the bottom of that list. Serial 75835094 issued as registration 2391635, and registration numbers in the 2.39 million range date to 1999 and 2000. The "R" that appears on the loading screen of every Rockstar game has been a registered property for a quarter of a century, and the company has kept adding to the pile ever since, most recently under a serial in the 90 million range. Assembling thirteen or fourteen registrations of a single letter into one pleading is what a trademark portfolio is for. It is also a reminder of how thin the thing being protected is: one glyph, in a particular treatment, in particular classes of goods. Two "R" oppositions in a week is a small uptick, not a campaign This is where the sense of proportion has to come in, and the raw number provides it. Take-Two's total footprint in the Board's public database returned "100+" results. The company is a heavy, routine user of the TTAB, and it has been for years. No single filing in the list below should be framed as unusual aggression. The volume is the context. That said, the recent run is genuinely a little busier than usual. From the result list fetched at 03:04:06 UTC on 9 September, HTTP 200, 85,214 bytes, Take-Two appears as plaintiff or potential opposer in seven proceedings in under four weeks: 4 September 2026, proceeding 99171880, against X-Communicado Inc., mark X-COMMUNICADO. 27 August 2026, proceeding 99687889, against DUMB EYES LLC, mark CIVILIZATION. 26 August 2026, proceeding 91309921, against Raised On Film LLP, mark R. 25 August 2026, proceeding 99751937, against Westport Games L.L.C., mark THE CREATURE MAFIA. 20 August 2026, proceeding 99603463, against NEW PORT LLC, mark R. 12 August 2026, proceeding 91309584, against T2P Gaming, LLC, mark T2P GAMING. 12 August 2026, proceeding 99614891, against Social Plus Holdings Ltd, mark SOCIAL.PLUS. Seven actions in under four weeks, two of them over "R" marks. That is worth a sentence and not a headline. One of the seven is interesting for a different reason. Opposition 91309584, against T2P GAMING, pleads the corporate "T2" marks rather than Rockstar's: serials 86018838 (registration 4459305), 88340525 (registration 6045220), 76588919 (registration 3147137) and 85347708 (registration 4114224). Two different brand identities, two different portfolios, deployed against two different applicants in the same month. A corporate footnote about who owns the R Since we are on the subject of Rockstar's identity, here is a piece of the record that surprises people. CONFIRMED, from Companies House, fetched at 03:04:51 UTC on 9 September, HTTP 200, 37,386 bytes. Company number 03312220, registered office 7 Savoy Court, London WC2R 0EX, status Active, incorporated 4 February 1997. Its previous names, verbatim from the register: ROCKSTAR NORTH LIMITED, 30 May 2002 to 22 December 2021 ROCKSTAR STUDIOS LIMITED, 27 March 2002 to 30 May 2002 DMA DESIGN LIMITED, 10 April 1997 to 27 March 2002 PINCO 900 LIMITED, 4 February 1997 to 10 April 1997 The entity that is today Rockstar Games UK Limited began as an off-the-shelf shell called Pinco 900 Limited, became DMA Design, the studio that made the original Grand Theft Auto, then Rockstar Studios, then Rockstar North, and has carried its present name since December 2021. "Rockstar North Limited" has not been the company's registered name for nearly five years. An important caveat. A registered office address and a registered company name tell you about corporate structure and nothing about where developers physically sit. We are not saying anybody moved anywhere. The register records a name and an address, and that is all we are reporting. One forward calendar item from the same record, worth diarising: the company's statutory accounts for the year to 31 March 2026 are due by 31 December 2026, which is six weeks after the game ships. Those will be the first UK statutory accounts covering the final year of Grand Theft Auto VI development, and accounts of that kind typically disclose headcount and staff costs. The gap in this reporting, stated plainly We could not check for new trademark applications, and that matters. Two USPTO endpoints refused our researcher. The Trademark Status and Document Retrieval API returned HTTP 401, 279 bytes, at 03:06:50 UTC on 9 September, with a body reading, verbatim: "Beginning October 2, you'll need to register for an API key to download bulk data from our TSDR APIs. Register for an API key at https://account.uspto.gov/api-manager/." We hold no key, so no prosecution-status data appears anywhere in this article. The USPTO trademark search API returned HTTP 405 MethodNotAllowed, 368 bytes, to a POST request at 03:06:40 UTC. That is the endpoint that would let us sweep for new Take-Two or Rockstar applications, including any Grand Theft Auto VI filings. That sweep was not performed and that gap is unfilled. If somebody tells you there are or are not new GTA VI trademark applications, ask them which endpoint they used. A third route, the assignment API, was unreachable entirely, so there is no ownership-transfer data here either. What is and is not established CONFIRMED, from TTABVUE at 03:04:27 UTC on 9 September, against a database snapshot stamped "Results as of 09/08/2026 11:04 PM": proceeding 99171880, a first 90 day request to extend time to oppose the mark X-COMMUNICADO, filed and granted on 4 September 2026, running to 9 December 2026, with Take-Two as potential opposer. CONFIRMED: opposition 91309921, filed 26 August 2026 and pending, brought by Take-Two against Raised On Film LLP's mark R, serial 99510663. CONFIRMED, with the discrepancy disclosed: the pleaded portfolio was recorded as fourteen properties, and thirteen serial and registration pairs were captured. We print the thirteen and flag the difference rather than smoothing it. CONFIRMED: Take-Two appears as plaintiff or potential opposer in seven Board proceedings filed between 12 August and 4 September 2026, two of them concerning "R" marks, against a total Board footprint returned as "100+". MANDATORY HEDGE: an extension of time to oppose is a procedural clock, it is not an opposition, and obtaining one commits Take-Two to filing nothing. MANDATORY HEDGE: an opposition is a contested administrative proceeding before the TTAB. It is not a lawsuit. No damages are available, the Board cannot stop anybody using a mark, and the only thing at stake is a federal registration. Explicitly not claimed: that anybody has done anything wrong. Allegations in a notice of opposition are the opposer's allegations, and neither proceeding has been decided. Explicitly not claimed: that any of this is unusual for Take-Two. The 100+ figure is the context and the seven recent filings are a small uptick within it. Method limits printed as limits: TSDR returned HTTP 401 because an API key is now required, and the USPTO trademark search API returned HTTP 405 to a POST, so no sweep for new trademark applications was possible and that gap is unfilled. The assignment API was unreachable, so there is no ownership-transfer data here. Caveat on the Companies House material: a registered name and a registered office describe corporate structure and say nothing about where anybody works. Our running record of what Take-Two and Rockstar have actually put on paper is on the GTA 6 wiki, and today's other filings work, including the two Form 4s that landed on 4 September, is on the news desk. If none of this is why you came, the servers list and the leaderboards are open.