Earlier this month, a few eagle-eyed NeoGAF users noticed that Sony Corp had filed paperwork to trademark the term “Let’s Play,” a phrase gamers use for fan made gameplay videos with commentary. Sony’s application was denied, but it seems that the company tried a second time and was again rejected.

This week, the McArthur Law Firm, which had filed a Letter of Protest against Sony’s original attempt, announced that Sony’s application had again been rejected, and the firm offered a bit more information on why Sony’s requests had been denied.

“The previous ‘rejection,’ widely misreported a few weeks ago, was in reality just a minor nuisance to Sony,” the firm said in a blog post. “This rejection is far more lethal to Sony’s trademark application. To support its rejection, the [United States Patent and Trademark Office] evidence consisted entirely of the first two sources included in our Letter of Protest: the Wikipedia page for Let’s Play and the /r/letsplay subreddit.”

It is not entirely clear what exactly Sony hoped to gain through trademarking Let’s Play, but the paperwork it filed shows that the company wanted to use the term for its own video streaming services on PlayStation. In its refusal letter, the USPTO said that Sony’s trademark is denied because “this phrase merely describes applicant’s services because applicant would stream ‘let’s play’ videos.”

The McArthur Law Firm said that is appears unlikely that Sony will ever succeed in its attempts to trademark the phrase “Let’s Play.”

“Given the strength of this evidence, we are confident that Sony will not be able to overcome this rejection,” the firm said. “The term ‘Let’s Play’ is now forever in the public domain.”

photo credit: 2013 E3 – Unfriendly Neighbors B via photopin (license)