The “Let’s Play” idea has, up until now, been a popular activity associated almost exclusively with YouTube. If you are unaware of the practice, players post episodic video series of themselves playing a video game, and viewers can watch along with them as they tackle it. For example, you might see a series called “Let’s Play Fallout 4,” in which the players plays through Fallout 4 over a series of videos. But now Sony has made a curious move – they’ve apparently tried to copyright the term.
Sony has apparently filed to have the term “Let’s Play” trademarked. According to a recent document, Sony filed to create the trademark in October. And that’s not all – they apparently have been rejected, at least temporarily. A December 29th update to the document shows a “non-final action” was emailed, meaning that Sony’s plans to trademark the term have taken a setback.
If Sony does manage to trademark such a commonly used term, it would have huge implications for the video game industry. Our guess is that it is too common, and too widely established already, for them to get their way. Could YouTube (Google) try the same thing afterwards? They would certainly have a better shot at it, since they have been using the term for a while now.