First, Ubisoft’s open world action-adventure title, Watch Dogs, was delayed from last November until the summer of this year. Then, just last week, news broke out that the game’s release had been cancelled for the Wii U platform. And following that, NeoGAF user Rösti came across a United States Patent and Trademark Office document which appeared to confirm Ubisoft’s recently filed express abandonment of the Watch Dogs trademark as of today. Take a look:

And then, the plot thickened. According to Polygon, Ubisoft has caught wind of their supposed “express abandonment” of the Watch Dogs trademark and have filed an petition to the United States Pantent and Trademark Office to repeal the motion: “On February 1, 2014, Ubisoft Entertainment received an email from [email protected] notifying Ubisoft Entertainment that a Request for Express Abandonment had been filed in connection with Application Serial No. 85642398,” read the filing. “The Request for Express Abandonment purports to be signed by the Chief Executive Officer of Ubisoft Entertainment, Yves Guillemot.

“Mr. Guillemot, however, did not sign the Request for Express Abandonment, nor did Ubisoft Entertainment file the Request for Express Abandonment. The Request for Express Abandonment is fraudulent and was not filed by Ubisoft Entertainment or its representative.”

From there, the petition goes on to request reinstatement of the Watch Dogs trademark “promptly”. From the looks of things, either someone is very good at forging the Ubisoft CEO’s signature, or someone made a very unlikely mistake on the inside. Either way, it looks like Watch Dogs will in fact remain Watch Dogs after all, assuming Mr. Guillemot didn’t go rogue and file the abandonment himself. This is kind of bittersweet for me, however; I was totally building up excitement for a Watch Doge rebranding.

HT: NeoGAF, USPTO, Polygon