Intellivision Amico Trademark Dies, Replaced by New One with Changes Made

Remember the Intellivision Amico? The nostalgia driven game console has seen a handful of issues since its announcement. And now, we can add confusing trademark details to that. While one trademark appears dead, another has followed it with some interesting changes.

For those who may not have known, Intellivision was originally a game console from the late 1970s. It was best known for its number-pad style game controller that would come with special overlays for each game. Not that long ago, the current owner of the Intellivision name announced that they would be hitting the console market again with a new product: the Amico. Based on the original console, it was a modernization of sorts, while also bringing those retro games back to today.

Recently reported by VGC, the trademark for the Intellivision Amico appears to have been abandoned. Citing the United States Patent and Trademark Office website, trademark listing SN 88162720 lists details for the console, games, and online services as abandoned. As of June 20, 2022, the office states that they did not receive a response within the 6-month window of filing and would be closed.

Status: Abandoned because no Statement of Use or Extension Request timely filed after Notice of Allowance was issued.

But thats not all!

While searching the trademark files ourselves to confirm this, we came across something interesting. Yes, trademark 88162720 is indeed for the Amico and it does appear to be dead and abandoned. But we also noticed something that wasnt originally reported: theres a new trademark for the same product that was registered about 10 days after the other one died.

A new trademark, SN 97483448, was filed on June 30, 2022, detailing the Intellivision Amico, including the same owners, legal team, and everything from the original filing. Well, almost everything, there does appear to be one distinct change between the two filings. The original filing lists their goods and services as game consoles, entertainment services, and game cartridges and software. The new filing, however, removes the game cartridges section and replaces it with Downloadable computer game software.

So before you go telling people the Amico is dead, it more likely appears to have reformatted their business strategy to no longer provide physical game carts.

This makes sense, in a way. The console doesn't support physical game carts anyway. Intellivision tried to find some kind of trendy middle ground back in October when they were selling physical game cases. No games were in the case, however. Instead, they contained an RFID-chipped card assigned to an NFT of each game. So the process was still quite digital.

What a mess this has been. The Amico has seen nothing but difficulty since its reveal. The consoles launch was delayed due to COVID complications, and then a significant reduction in staff was taken to keep the console alive, followed by the company loaning their IP to other companies for funding. Struggles were further highlighted after refunds for console pre-orders were being ignored or delayed.

We wont gloat, but weve been skeptical of the Amico since its initial announcement. The statements made by the company seemed out of touch with the industry and seemed more in line with someone trying to capitalize on older generations missing the good ol days.

In short: the Amico trademark isnt dead, but has been replaced by a new one with a different list of good and services, implying a change in business direction. How this will affect the console on launch, should it ever get to that point, remains to be seen.