December 27, 2025Dec 27 As of December 15th, 2025, Kadokawa has renewed the Trademark rights for Guyver. This is something that has to be done every 10 years in Japan... Which the last time they did it, the Manga was actually still being published. https://chizai-watch.com/t/2025139888?q=kadokawa&d=20251215&a=株式会社KADOKAWA It's a bit of interesting news that doesn't actually tell us anything about what is going on with the Manga... Only that Kadokawa is still invested in owning the franchise and controlling what various products can use it.
January 3Jan 3 Its strange to me they would do this. It's not like Guyver is a big cash cow. Paranoid part of me is wondering if they keeping it tied up so others can't grab it...
January 3Jan 3 Author 5 hours ago, Larz Zahn said: Its strange to me they would do this. It's not like Guyver is a big cash cow. Paranoid part of me is wondering if they keeping it tied up so others can't grab it... Could be a legacy thing or a contract they have with Takaya. The website does show them doing this a lot, so they might also just not want to let anything go, no matter how successful or dead the series is. The paranoid part of you might also be correct... Something that is also interesting about Japanese Trademark Law, is that if nothing is done with a license after 3 years of inactivity, someone else can appeal and see about getting the Trademark revoked. And now we are getting new Figma figures... That is taking more than a year, if not more than 2 years for each figure... We randomly get an artbook with zero new artwork... They might just be doing them for that reason... But at least when they do release them, they are of high quality and sell well.
January 5Jan 5 This is more likely a business decision on the part of Kadokawa rather than the author. Since there are figures being released for the Guyver, this copyright protects them from third parties developing unauthorized (pirated) versions of any merchandise they produce. Because if there is no copyright on the IP, you can be assured that a lot of 3rd party will profit from it. At least this way, even if 3rd parties develop any form of merchandise related to the IP, Kadokawa still profits from its licensing.
January 5Jan 5 Yeah it's just a business thing. Guyver has been part of their long list of IP for decades. They're not gonna just let it go. Even if they're doing nothing with it, it's still some worth to keep it. Because otherwise, someone else could gain the IP and do something with it, that would be worse.
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