Cave Story Copyright / Trademark

Jan 4, 2020 at 4:20 AM
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Hey there! new to the forums, and I've been lurking on the discord group for sometime, The question of Cave Story © and ™ has arisen, and it appears to have shown up here as well. So I decided to do some digging. I'd like to request some help. And no this is not another "Nicalis Bad" post, this is a genuine inquiry as i do not have much background on this subject.

Here is what I found:

Nicalis, the company who should have the rights to "Cave Story" (Notice the exact spelling) has had the actual registration abandoned as of June 5th, 2009.

What does this mean?
The Trademark for "Cave Story" has been labeled in the WIPO Database as well as the US Patent and Trademark Database. As far as I am aware a trademark goes to public domain or can be purchased again after 3 to 5 years of abandonment. But I feel like there is something I'm missing

Additional Information:
There is no copyright registration for "Cave Story" or it's Japanese name "Doukutsu Monogatari".
The database entry states that the Trademark is abandoned for "Failure to Respond to Office Action"
There are no other registration entries for the "Cave Story" mark aside from one about a bar in The Republic of Korea (Unrelated for the scope of this post)

However as we all know "Cave Story+" was released on June 20th 2017 by, you guessed it Nicalis.

If there is any Copyright lawyer or someone with some background that could help clarify this please do, because as far as i am aware, this puts "Cave Story" (or at the very least the name) into the public domain.

Edit: This does not take into account the Implicit copyright for "Cave Story" this is just to substantiate somethings I'm confused about
 
Jan 4, 2020 at 4:27 AM
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My only guess is that NICALiS (or nicalis) deemed “Cave Story” to vague, since I my self have seen refer to a Cave Story that wasn’t Studio Pixel’s. That’s just my guess however.
 
Jan 4, 2020 at 4:34 AM
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My only guess is that NICALiS (or nicalis) deemed “Cave Story” to vague, since I my self have seen refer to a Cave Story that wasn’t Studio Pixel’s. That’s just my guess however.

As far as I am aware (Aside from the implicit Copyright) "Cave Story" isn't registered under Studio Pixel or NICALiS, Neither is "Cave Story+" There is no Copyright information nor is there active trademarks
 
Jan 4, 2020 at 4:39 AM
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As far as I am aware (Aside from the implicit Copyright) "Cave Story" isn't registered under Studio Pixel or NICALiS, Neither is "Cave Story+" There is no Copyright information nor is there active trademarks
I was using Studio Pixel’s to imply the game, not the trade mark. I was trying to say that i’ve seen discussion around something called “Cave Story” which wasn’t the game. It may be a Biohazard Resident Evil Scenario. Anyway I apologize for any inconvenience.
 
Jan 8, 2020 at 7:38 PM
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Perhaps. But then again, I can't find the Copyright registration for Cave Story anywhere
 
Jan 12, 2020 at 5:31 AM
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You don't register copyright.
You do for titles. Thats why Resident Evil isn’t called Biohazard outside of Japan, due to BioHazard being to hard to trademark.
 
Jan 12, 2020 at 2:59 PM
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You're conflating copyright and trademarking.
Oops, I accidentally did lol. But it what’s the original user was asking.
 
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