GTA 6 NEWS · TRADEMARK WATCH
WWE Quietly Abandoned Its "Vice City" Trademark — and Weeks Before GTA 6, Nobody Has to Ask Why
On September 21, the United States Patent & Trademark Office quietly processed a filing that wrestling fans and GTA fans alike saw coming from a mile away: WWE abandoned its attempt to trademark "VICE CITY." No opposition ruling, no legal war, no press release — just an express abandonment request from WWE itself, processed a month and a half after the company first tried to claim one of the most charged names in entertainment. Today, fewer than eight weeks before Grand Theft Auto VI turns Vice City back into the most famous fictional city on Earth.
As IGN reports, the initial application was filed in early August and deemed dead just over a month later, on September 21. No official reason was given. But the timing — and the name on the filing — has everyone asking the same question: did somebody in Stamford get a phone call from New York?
What Happened
According to the USPTO filing — surfaced by IGN, Insider Gaming, and the wrestling press at Cageside Seats — WWE applied to trademark the all-caps term "VICE CITY" in early August, registered for entertainment services: "wrestling exhibitions and performances by a professional wrestler and entertainer rendered live and through broadcast media including television and radio, and via the internet or commercial online service."
If you don’t follow wrestling, the target of that filing is easy to guess: Lola Vice, the Miami-born NXT standout who was promoted to WWE’s main roster this year. Her hometown is the real-world inspiration for Rockstar’s Vice City, her ring name is literally "Vice," and "Vice City" is her established branding. Trademarking a wrestler’s branding ahead of a main-roster push is standard WWE practice — the company files these constantly for entrance music names, show names, and gimmicks.
What’s not standard is picking the exact name of the setting of the most anticipated video game ever made, weeks before that game launches. On September 21, the USPTO confirmed it had processed WWE’s express abandonment — meaning WWE itself walked away voluntarily. Insider Gaming notes no reason was given, and the wrestling community’s read was blunt: as Cageside Seats put it, "Maybe WWE didn’t want the smoke? Maybe Take-Two’s lawyers gave them a ‘friendly’ nudge?"
The Twist: Rockstar Doesn’t Technically Own "Vice City" Either
Here’s the detail most coverage is skipping, and it’s the most interesting part of the whole story. As Insider Gaming points out, Take-Two and Rockstar don’t hold a trademark on the plain "Vice City" wordmark at all — what they own is "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City," the full title of the 2002 classic. The standalone "Vice City" wordmark belongs to two unrelated companies, Redcon 1, LLC and Wanted Brands, LLC.
So in the strictest legal sense, WWE wasn’t trying to steal Rockstar’s property. But trademarks are defended in the court of public confusion as much as in court — and a wrestling promotion holding "VICE CITY" while the biggest game on the planet floods every screen, billboard, and feed with Vice City imagery is a confusion generator no IP lawyer would sign off on. When the filing first surfaced in August, Cageside Seats’ own Sean Ruiz predicted it was "destined to fail" purely because of the timing. He was right.
And then there’s the delicious irony buried in this story: Take-Two publishes WWE 2K. The company whose lawyers would be first in line to oppose a "Vice City" grab is WWE’s own video game partner. Whether that relationship produced a quiet phone call instead of a formal opposition is, as Insider Gaming notes, "likely something that will never become public." But you don’t have to squint to connect those dots — IGN’s own subhead asks, "Can you smell what Rockstar is cooking?"
The Timing Nobody Can Ignore
The calendar around this abandonment is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Per GTA fansite GTAVice.net, just one day before the USPTO processed WWE’s abandonment — on September 20 — "Vice City" appeared in the trademark information on the Xbox and PlayStation Store listings for Grand Theft Auto VI. To be clear: nothing in the WWE filing documents mentions Rockstar or Take-Two, and no one has established any connection between the two events. That part is pure coincidence-shaped speculation, and we’re labeling it as such.
But zoom out and the pattern is unmistakable. Rockstar is spending real money to make sure the world associates "Vice City" with exactly one product this fall: the company dropped a reported $975,000 on a "Welcome to Vice City" sign on Miami’s Kaseya Center, kicked off a full physical takeover of the real Miami, and blanketed billboards with Spotify tease-collaboration marketing. When you’re investing that kind of money into two words, the last thing you want is a wrasslin’ promotion holding a registration on them.
What This Means for GTA 6
In isolation, a wrestling trademark filing is trivia. As a data point in a larger pattern, it’s a measuring stick for how valuable the Vice City name has become. Over the past month, Take-Two has handed out copyright strikes over leaked GTA 5 and GTA 6 material, and Rockstar rewrote its modding rules to lock down how its worlds can be reused. Now a billion-dollar entertainment company looked at the same two words, did the math, and walked away without a fight. That’s the IP moat around November 19 in action.
There’s even a wink of destiny in the collision of these two worlds: as IGN notes, GTA 6’s recent extended look revealed backyard wrestling as one of Jason and Lucia’s many activities in Leonida — complete with a finishing move suspiciously close to John Cena’s Attitude Adjustment. Rockstar is borrowing from wrestling culture at the exact moment wrestling backed away from Rockstar’s city. Everybody, it seems, wants a piece of Vice City right now. Only one company owns the moment.
The Bottom Line
Lola Vice will be fine — WWE will find another way to protect her branding, and honestly "Vice City" works as a nickname whether or not it’s stamped on a registration. But the episode is a neat little fable about launch-year leverage: for eight weeks, one of the biggest entertainment companies on Earth reached for GTA’s name, and then — with zero drama — let it go. Whether it was a friendly nudge from the WWE 2K publisher, a cold look at the calendar, or simple self-preservation, the result is the same. Heading into November 19, there is exactly one "Vice City" that matters, and it launches on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.
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Related reading: Take-Two is scrubbing the GTA leaks · Rockstar’s new mod rules explained · The $975K Miami sign is complete · America is booking November 19 off work