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Any copyright and/or trademark experts around? It says here that previously Sega owned Alpha Protocol trademark has expired. Does that mean anyone can just use it? I know that the setting was generic as hell, but still.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Protocol#cite_note-62

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The trademark is just the name. Setting, story, characters, etc. would be covered by the copyright and unaffected by a trademark expiration.

A pity. Sega hates this game for some reason, you can't even buy it on Steam anymore.

"Some reason" might be 72/64/63 (PC/PS/XB) Metacritic scores and poor sales ("The game's slow sales contributed to Sega's lower-than-expected financial results in the three months ending on June 30, 2011")?

Very bad first impression is what this game excels at, but it gets better. In any case that's in the past and it looks like their music rights expired, that why it was pulled from Steam, not because of some special kind of malice to an old game. Situation still sucks though.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/segas-rights-as-publisher-of-a...

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