I'm gonna go ahead and call BS on this. I did a search at the US Patent and Trademark Office for the Documents on the original Airachnid trademark as posted on Transformers @ the Moon (Serial # 77892423).

There IS a document with the Predacon insignia attached to it, but it is in no way related to the Airachnid trademark. It seems the Predacon insignia documents are just there. There's some other logos attached for non-TF related products and don't necessarily mean it ties in with TF.

Actually, what the document is saying is that Mattel actually has an active trademark on "Arachnoid" as of 2005 and that "Airachnid" hasn't been cleared for use and Hasbro is still trying to apply for it.

That's my own detective work, feel free to correct me where wrong. Wish we had a copyright/trademark lawyer in the fandom to help us out

 

looks like beast wars is hasbro's "Prime" objective with the new show   but how is a singular name going to carry a factions insignia..unless the character arachnid just symbolizes the entire predacons, thatd be pretty hard core

 

Wait... Is this this Arachnid?

 

yeah

 

Well in Beast Wars Arachnid was the Predacon base, so maybe in Transformers rime It will be their floating spider base?

 

It could be from the animated series. The one episode with waspinator and blackaracknia going back in time. So it could be transformers beast wars animated. Probobably after tf prime

 

I'm hoping this will be part of Prime. Bringing Beast Wars back sounds like a bad idea. It was done great the first time around.

I can't see Hasbro going completely "Beast" now that the movies have established that Transformers are (for the most part) VEHICLES.

I'm thinking this will be more like Blackarachnia in animated, or Dinobot in Universe. An animal who is put among the other normal Transformers. Hey, we got guys like Straxus and Skullgrin in Generations. It wouldn't be crazy to think they could drop "Airachnid" in.

 

I'm all for mixing vehicle and beast alternate modes. Cybertron had this with its intergalactic theme, but the actual character development in that series was terrible. I really liked how BW characters were used in Animated and would like Prime to take a similar route.

 

I'm a tiny bit surprised after all this time that nobody brought up the incredibly boring possibility that this is just the name for a Movie Insecticon redeco.

Of course I'd prefer something in Generations (but what?) and the potential Insecticon PCC theory is very plausible.

 

I'm a trademark lawyer in the fandom!

I second your call of BS. There's nothing in the AIRACHNID filing records that indicates any connection of that mark to the Predacon symbol. The Predacon symbol registration is attached as part of an office action where the examiner is explaining that even though the G&S are different, they overlap, and he cites many examples, including the Pred symbol.

The combination of Pred symbol and the AIRACHNID mark seems only to occur on the fan sites, and I don't see it anywhere in the application. I think someone was just pasting them together and going all Glen Beck with it. There's no connection between the two that I can find.

 

I was under the impression that this was a character or base-bot or something like that associated with Transformers  rime.

 

Such a weird symbol. Beast Wars were so weird. And awesome.

 

Perhaps Hasbro lost the rights to "Tarantulas"?

 

High-five! We're a couple of Nightbeat's on the scene

 

Apparently they did before, because the last release of him was "Predacon Tarantulas" in the 10th anniversary line.

 

I'm always wondering why Hasbro doesn't just attach a prefix to every name they lose, like "Autobot Jazz." Why didn't they just call Darkmount "Lord Straxus" or "Decepticon Straxus", and Tankor "Decepticon Octane"?

 

They can't really do that... there's a lot more to it than that.

But I'm curious who is actively using the Straxus name...

 

I couldn't find anything in the Trademark search for anything close to Straxus or even Darkmount. Go figure.

 

I'm guessing Bionicle. Greg Farshtey gets a list of names that he's free to use in story that got passed through legal, and I think Straxus might be one of them. It sounds Bionicle-esque.

Edit: I asked Greg and apparently it's not them. The name wasn't trademarked by Lego.