The guys over at DualShockers noticed Sega has lost its rights to trademark Shenmue due to inactivity.

Apparently Sega either did not provide the declaration required to keep the trademark, or did not manage to bring up a suitable excuse for the fact that the company hasn't been making commercial use of it.

The official patent page is here: uspto.gov.

"Registration cancelled because registrant did not file an acceptable declaration under Section 8. To view all documents in this file, click on the Trademark Document Retrieval link at the top of this page."

Sega simply havn't bothered with renewing their trademarks for Shenmue, which has sadly caused this to happen. On the other hand this could allow Sega to hand over the rights to another company. Shenmue 3 is the long awaited sequel that never happened.

Here's what Shenmue 3 boxart could have looked like