EA renews System Shock TM

More than five years after the last game in the series was released, Electronic Arts has renewed its ownership rights to the "System Shock" name.

EA's application to register the trademark made mention of the fact that it was to apply to "a computer game that may be accessed network-wide by network users" or "an online computer game accessed and played via mobile and cellular phones and other wireless devices," interestingly.

EA published System Shock 2 in 1999, but since then there's been no word of a sequel. That said, developer Irrational Games is currently hard at work on BioShock, which is billed as something of a follow-up. BioShock will be published by 2K Games on PC and next-gen consoles in 2007, following Take-Two's acquisition of Irrational.

So is EA planning to release a true sequel that will compete with BioShock? Or are they simply taking care of business and renewing the trademark just in case? Seems more likely that it's the latter, but no one at EA was available for comment at the time of writing. We'll keep you posted.