Is ‘Delta Emerald’ the TCG’s XY5 Set?

Last September, Pokemon filed a trademark for “Rising Fist” which later turned out to be the TCG’s third XY set. We at PokeBeach did not discover the “Rising Fist” trademark until the end of September when an insider informed us that it would be the name of the next set (Rising Fist was unofficially announced for the first time in March, about four months later). We continued to search through trademark databases for any future sets and, last December, discovered the trademark for “Phantom Gate,” which was filed in the same manner as “Rising Fist” (Phantom Gate was unofficially announced today, almost seven months after its trademark was filed – yes, we’ve known about it for that long :p).

While we were almost certain before it was announced that Rising Fist would be XY3, and then were absolutely certain Phantom Gate would be XY4, we did not assume the recently discovered trademark for Delta Emerald would be XY5. It was filed under slightly different terminology than the trademarks for both “Rising Fist” and “Phantom Gate.” And like many other sites, we also assumed the trademark for “Delta Emerald” was related to the video games since Pokemon always files extra trademarks when new Pokemon games are about to come out.

However, the fact that Creatures/Pokemon has been filing online trademarks for its TCG sets since Rising Fist (from what we can tell), and giving how early the past two sets have been trademarked (each set being trademarked before the set before it is even announced), it seems just as likely that this “Delta Emerald” could be related to the TCG. As we pointed out in our original post, Delta Pokemon were a major feature of the TCG during the third generation. The fact it’s “Delta” Emerald may be suggesting it’s the TCG set that will both promote Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire and also pay homage to those old Delta sets. The mid-December set after September’s Phantom Gate would also be the prime candidate to advertise late-November’s remakes.

We’re not saying all of this with any kind of certainty, of course – “Delta Emerald” is probably just an extra trademark that Pokemon filed with the video games in mind. It could have absolutely nothing to do with the TCG. But since Phantom Gate is now confirmed to be a TCG set, and many large gaming websites posted that “Phantom Gate” could or would be the next Pokemon game, we thought we should bring this trademark stuff to light so every potential TCG trademark isn’t immediately assumed to be a new Pokemon game in the future. In other words, the trademarks can be interpreted to be anything Pokemon-related (as I did above with applying “Delta Emerald” to the TCG), especially in light of the fact it seems Creatures has started to file TCG trademarks in online databases as of last year and all the Pokemon trademarks are now mixed together. The more you know, right?

I’ve been watching Star Trek: Voyager all summer (not that I’ve haven’t watched every episode 100 times before), so forgive me if all of the above sounds like a letter to my fellow colleagues of video game academia. :p To discuss this story, check out this thread on our forums!