Bethesda Softworks - Fallout 4 Trademark

If you have been following the news in the forums about Fallout 4 it seems there might be some truth to them. According to The Vault Bethesda has trademarked the next Fallout game.

Bethesda registers Fallout 4 trademark

The Internet exploded in speculation as it turned out that a few days ago, Bethesda filed for a Fallout 4 trademark with the Office for the Harmonization of the Internal Market through their usual legal firm, DLA Piper.

You can find the filings here and here. Both are Nice classes 9, 16, 25, 41.

In human terms, this means Bethesda filed for trademarks for games, online information about games, printed media, and clothing. If you want the precise legal definition, look up the above links.

Now, does that mean anything? Maybe. Digging up the trademark filing for Fallout: New Vegas, it can be plainly seen that the European trademark was registered in October 2009, in Nice classes 9 and 41, about four months before the teaser trailer was released in February 2010. This might be a similar situation. Might just be the company protecting its IP.

Is it related to the thesurvivor2299.com website? That remains to be seen. Reddit users have traced the countdown code to a Polish web developer, Krzysztof Furtak. The code is available publicly under the GNU GPL license. Does this explain the presence of Polish variables in the code? Maybe. It doesn't explain, however, why the site was initially hosted on a Polish server or why a multimillion dollar gaming company would use a GPL code when they have enough web designers of their own. A strong dose of skepticism is recommended.