Sony did not renew the trademark for The Last Guardian, but a spokesperson for the company has told gaming site Kotaku that the game was still in development, but that no other information was available.
There have been some technical issues with the game and at this year's E3 in June, Sony worldwide studios president Shuhei Yoshida told Game Informer magazine that, "There are some technical issues being addressed. There's not much to show what it looks like."
The Last Guardian an upcoming video game developed by Team Ico, to be published exclusively for the PlayStation 3 and is expected to share stylistic, thematic, and gameplay elements with Team Ico's previous game Shadow of the Colossus, an action-adventure game released on the PlayStation 2. The game is considered to be unusual within the genre, because there are no towns or dungeons to explore and no characters interactions.
The Last Guardian was originally expected to hit the PlayStation 3 in late 2011, but was pushed back to 2012, before further complications in the games development left the release date in question.
After Sony filed the Trade mark in 2009, they had three years to use The Last Guardian's trademark. Sony still has till January 2013 to prove commercial use, but that will not likely happen since the game is nowhere near being released.
A few gaming sites are speculating whether Sony decided not to retain the rights to the trademark, because the game's name sounds too similar to another Sony game the Last of Us.
Here is a look at the game's trailer...