An overdue Rom trademark update

An e-mail prompted me to finally see what the latest is on Hasbro's attempts to once again trademark ROM. I won't summarize the history like I did in the last update, but you can go read it for yourself if you need a refresher. Or, if you want to read the whole saga, you can start at the beginning. (Really, I've been following this since November 2008?) Since it's officially (somewhat) new information since the last update, I will confirm that all eight of Hasbro's original trademark filings are dead because they were either denied or Hasbro used up all their extensions.

So, there are currently three trademarks Hasbro has applied for. The first is for comic books and was granted in April 2013. They've already used the first of their five possible extensions to use it in commerce (i.e. publish a ROM comic book). Extensions are required every six months if Hasbro doesn't have proof of use. Five extensions give them three years to do so.

The second trademark is for "toy action figures and toy robots convertible into other visual toy forms," which leads to the already existing rumor that Hasbro is going to make Rom part of the Transformers toy line. It, too, was granted in April 2013 and has had one extension filed against it.

The final trademark is for "entertainment services, namely an on-going animated television series for children." This one was only granted in June 2013 and, because I've gotten lazy, is new to me. It would seem to contradict Hasbro making Rom part of the Transformers, unless such a TV series would be a spin-off of Transformers: Prime or something. The first extension was just granted last month.

And finally, I remind you that although Hasbro owns Rom, his look, and his three accessories, Marvel owns the other Spaceknights, Dire Wraiths, and everything else. So whatever — if anything — Hasbro ends up doing with the character is going to have to be different from what we Rom fans are used to.