Rockstar's Parent Company Re-Registers Trademarks For "Judas"

Rockstar and 2K's parent company, Take-Two Interactive, has seemingly re-registered its trademarks for a mysterious project called "Judas."

Records from the Unites States Patent & Trademark Office database show that Take-Two re-registered its trademarks for Judas on May 11, after originally registering the trademarks in April 2016.

The prosecution history for the original April 2016 Judas trademark filings show that Take-Two filed for multiple extensions on the trademark, up until November 2019. The new trademarks cover the same goods and services, including video games, movies, and more.

You can read the full text of each trademark filing through the links below.

May 11, 2020

• Judas - 88909544
• Judas - 88909537

April 22, 2016

• Judas - 87011340
• Judas - 87011337

A website, "www.judasthegame.com," is registered to brand protection agency MarkMonitor, which is also the registrar for Rockstar's official website. Take-Two has never commented on Judas.

According to the Bible, Judas Iscariot was one of Jesus Christ's twelve disciples. He is perhaps best known for his betrayal of Jesus, and today, Judas is often used to describe a traitorous person.

Trademark filings don't always lead to product announcements, as Activision obtained trademarks for things like Call of Duty Space Warfare and Secret Warfare, and those never came to be. Rockstar famously announced a spy game called Agent at E3 2009, but it never came out.

The re-registration of the Judas trademarks comes just before Take-Two releases its next earnings report on May 20. If there is any news on Judas during that event, we'll report back with more details.

During Take-Two's earnings report in February, CEO Strauss Zelnick teased that the company's upcoming development pipeline for the coming years is the "largest and most diverse in our history." The slate of releases includes sequels and new IP, Zelnick said, according to Tweaktown.

Take-Two president Karl Slatoff tempered expectations for the company's new release slate, saying he's sure that plans will change and not every game in development will be released. "One thing we know for sure is that it will change," Zelnick said about Take-Two's development pipeline. "Not everything in the pipeline will see the light of day, and there will be things that are not in the pipeline that will come out."