Until now, the metaverse has been a preserve of large private corporations and upcoming but well-funded startups.
The term has taken the world by storm, and there is a strong feeling that this is the next evolution of the internet.
Now, government bodies are seeking a piece of the action. The United States Airforce (USAF) is the first of these. It has filed a trademark application for ‘SpaceVerse’.
The application was reportedly submitted to the US Patent and Trademark Office on April 14. Trademark attorney Mike Kondoudis was first to make the discovery.
The United States Air Force has filed a trademark application for SPACEVERSE for a metaverse that
1. Converges terrestrial and space physical and digital realities
2. Provides extended-reality training, testing, and operations environments
Mike Kondoudis
Not much elaboration is provided in the patent application, but one key aspect is training, which is likely the best use case for the Air Force right now.
The term ‘SpaceVerse’ is curious in that it has been filed by the Air Force, rather than the Space Force.
For long, the US Air Force was the division that handed all space defense efforts. Those duties were however expected to be handed over to the Space Force, once it was created a few years ago.
This patent filing follows a trend of increasing number of metaverse and NFT-related trademarks.
According to some estimates, the total number of NFT trademark applications in 2021 exceeded 1200. That number should go up this year.
