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In early July, Evil Hat Productions filed to register a trademark for Star Frontiers, an abandoned trademark previously held by Wizards of the Coast as part of their purchase of TSR.
TSR’s Star Frontiers published between 1982 and 1985. A remake of the setting with a different name was published in 2004 as part of Wizards of the Coasts’ d20 Modern sourcebook, d20 Future. The United States Patent and Trademark Office lists Wizard of the Coasts’ claim on the trademark as “dead” as of April 17, 2004.
The TSR version of Star Frontiers was the company’s space-faring science-fiction roleplaying game, set in a relatively unknown region of space where humans and a group of other alien species had formed a “United Planetary Federation”. Evil Hat’s filing for the trademark lists a roleplaying game and a series of fiction works including novels.
This article has been edited as mentioned in the comments below.
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Please do a little more due diligence before reporting rumors as news, folks.
Thanks for your feedback, Fred.
The item that was newsworthy was your company filing to register a well-known roleplaying game’s abandoned trademark for a potential game and line of fiction. Our article provided context to this and the history of the trademark.
As to the rumor you allude to, the “Evil Hat’s version of Star Frontiers is rumored to have an entirely new setting” line should have been vetted further. We have removed that line from the article following your statement on Twitter about how that statement didn’t originate from anyone with access to any real information about Evil Hat Productions’ plans for the property.
Additionally, the links we originally included to the USPTO website to provide context have since timed out. We have replaced them with links to another website and a different page on USPTO’s site.