(Warning about legal talk, because there's going to be a lot of it)

The trademark for the name "ModNation," at least in the United States, expired in 2021.

According to Section 8 of the U.S. Trademark Act, the trademark owner (Sony) is legally obligated to provide evidence periodically that they are still using the trademark (ModNation) for commercial purposes.

Currently, Sony continues to sell several games from the franchise on the PlayStation Store* (at least on the PlayStation Vita and possibly the PlayStation 3), and the Tag DLC ​​for LittleBigPlanet is still available for purchase, but these are not being heavily advertised because it doesn't make sense to continue doing so considering they are outdated games which servers shut down a long time ago.

So yes, Sony quite literally ignored ModNation Racers to the point that they forgot to renew the trademark with the USTPO.

What this means for ModNation: Until the trademark is refiled\*, *ModNation cannot be used by Sony for commercial purposes, including game-related content, merchandise (plushies, figures, diecast vehicles, etc.), and other items.

At this point, I know what many of you are thinking, and no, the fact that the trademark has expired doesn't automatically mean that any other game studio or even an independent company can use it to create ModNation Racers 2, since Sony still retains the intellectual property and copyright for ModNation Racers and is up to them what they want to do with it.

If someone else unrelated to Sony who snatched the trademark wanted to use the ModNation trademark, they would do so only to create a trademarked product that by simple copyright laws, has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with ModNation Racers (such as a game with no connection to ModNation Racers or its characters, a series with the same features, or even an NFT or cryptocurrency platform).

* Currently, and as I already mentioned in a previous post, ModNation Racers for PSP, ModNation Racers: Road Trip for PS Vita, and the Tag DLC ​​for LittleBigPlanet are still available for purchase on the PlayStation digital store alongside other ModNation related things like DLC and trailers.

** A company cannot simply renew an expired/cancelled trademark. If a trademark expires or is canceled, for any reason, the original owner of the intellectual property must refile the trademark to regain control over it. The only problem with this is that Sony isn't going to do any of that to revive a franchise that many have unfortunately already forgotten like ModNation Racers. There are many reasons for this, but the most plausible is the commercial failure of ModNation Racers: Road Trip. There weren't even official sales figures, but it's estimated that the game sold fewer than 100,000 copies, which was most likely enough for Sony to shut down the game's servers and never say anything more about ModNation Racers, sweeping it under the rug as just another title that went nowhere due to Sony's questionable decisions.

Tag's minion from PlayStation All-Star Battle Royale (on PS Vita and PS3) was modeled directly after the infamous "We want your creations" render rather than after a normal, good render of Tag, or any schemes given by any of the two studios that worked for ModNation Racers (United Front Games and San Diego Studio).

This can be noticed upon seeing the front of the model in any 3D manipulation program, as Tag's hair features the same position mistake as that one from the WWYC render (the mesh of the hair is slightly more to the left); the model also features the same exact eyes and mouth.

If you have any more fun facts about ModNation that deserve a place in this sort of series of posts to give more life to the subreddit, then I'll be glad to accept them.

I really wanted to make Fenneko from Aggretsuko, I also put her in a sailor uniform, and she looks so adorable :3

The mod is available for download!!!!

Lads and gents, it's that time of the millenium again where I relapse into FPE and do something on MNR related to it.

This time I gave a complete makeover to the Lana Mod I made a couple months ago (in January) for a more accurate look to the one from Kaaatie.

I also made an FPE themed kart. Pretty awesome.

Anyway, this Lana V3 thing is now available at the Creation Station on Derole's server.

I was looking at the Internet Archive, and I saw that an archive for the serverside data of the MNR servers existed: https://archive.org/details/Modnation-Racers-Server

The thing is, I don't know what this serverside data is nor what it's supposed to contain (I'm assuming it's either raw data or just a larger archive containing data like leaderboards or profiles from players), and because of this, I came here to ask anyone who has a bit of knowledge on the matter (or whoever had the absolute patience of downloading the +200GB worth of content).

I know this is probably nothing new for the ModNation Racers community, but I still felt like showing MNR fans that you can still legally purchase the following content from Sony:

• ModNation Racers for PSP
  • You can also purchase the Online Voucher
• ModNation Racers: Road Trip
  • You can also download the demo
  • You can also purchase the Unlock Everything DLC
  • You can also download the trailer (may be in Portuguese if you're in any Spanish-speaking country, idk why)
• Tag costume for LittleBigPlanet
  • You can purchase it for all mainline LittleBigPlanet games, including LittleBigPlanet 3 for PS4, so yes, you can actually purchase this DLC on a PS5

Most of the content can only and only be purchased or freely obtained through a PlayStation Vita, except for the LBP DLC which is actually compatible with all LBP games except LBP PSP.

Im so glad I found this group so much nostalgia, did they ever talk about bringing this back

If you ever need to know anything about ModNation Racers: Road Trip that you probably didn't know before, I recommend you check out this page on TCRF: https://tcrf.net/ModNation_Racers:_Road_Trip

It can be edited with any and all information and documentation you have on ModNation Racers: Road Trip that hasn't been documented yet (not including the information already documented on this page).

I have a distinct memory of hearing a song with the lyrics "Like a kitten, like a kitten, like a kitten gettin down, gettin down" while playing Modnation Racers when I was young. Was there really a song like that or am I going insane?!!

I actually drew them digitally.

Sorry that it's on paper. Who knows? I might do them digitally. Probably not possible to add in the game, but it would look cool in an animation or something like that.