Ahead of E3, Take-Two extends its "Agent" trademark

Just three weeks out from E3 2014, Take-Two this week was granted an extension on a pair of trademarks it holds for the long-dormant video game Agent. United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) documents show that Take-Two filed for an an extension on both trademarks on May 21 and was granted approval that same day.

Does this mean an official announcement is coming soon? Not necessarily. After all, Take-Two renewed its Agent trademarks last summer, and we haven't heard a peep about the game since. There's no reason to believe Take-Two extending the trademarks would be any different. However, Take-Two extending its ownership of the Agent name at least shows that the company is interested in hanging onto Agent for some reason to be announced later.

"We don’t comment on such matters," Alan Lewis, Take-Two's vice president of corporate communications, told GameSpot today.

Agent was announced all the way back in 2007, when Sony revealed it as a PlayStation 3-exclusive. Sony later talked more about it at the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo, revealing it would be set in the 1970s during the Cold War and that Sam and Dan Houser would be overseeing the project at Rockstar North. Most recently, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said in August 2012 that, "We haven't announced anything about [Agent] yet."

When the game does ship, it will do so with high expectations. In 2009, then-Take-Two president Ben Feder told GameSpot that Agent is being groomed to be the next Grand Theft Auto. The first images of the game emerged in 2011.

Earlier this month, Take-Two confirmed that its Rockstar Games subsidiary would ship a game for the PlayStation 4/Xbox One console generation in 2014, but it remains to be seen what this project is. Asked if Rockstar Games would have a presence at E3 next month, Take-Two didn't say yes and didn't say no. "At this point, Rockstar has not announced that they're going to be attending E3," Take-Two president Karl Slatoff said at the time.