Kadokawa - Guyver Trademark Renewed

[Matt Bellamy]

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.

[Larz Zahn]

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...

[Matt Bellamy]

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.