Microsoft Trademarks Name of Rare’s Nintendo 64 Classic Jet Force Gemini

Giuseppe Nelva January 21, 2016 1:40 PM EST

Among Rare’s cult classics of the Nintendo 64 era, there’s Jet Force Gemini, a colorful third person shooter originally released in 1999. The game was then re-released by Microsoft in Rare Replay, but the name wasn’t owned by the house of Xbox, until now.

The attempt to register the trademark started on on June 12th, 2015, but it ran into a bit of a problem: Initially the United States Patent and Trademark Office requested a disclaimed mentioning that Microsoft made no claim to the word “Jet,” but Microsoft responded that the Federal office registered other trademarks with the word “Jet” without the disclaimer, deeming it unnecessary.

In November, the USPTO agreed with Microsoft’s stance, and accepted the registration of the trademark, which was published on January 19th.

What’s quite interesting, is that not all of Rare’s classic games appeared in Rare Replay have been re-trademarked by Microsoft, or are currently trademarked at all. While this doesn’t necessarily mean that the house of Xbox or Rare have something Jet Force Gemini-related in the works right now, they’re at the very least interested in keeping a hold on the IP name.

Whether something will come out of it or not, time will tell.