The United States Air Force filed for a trademark, hinting that the military industry is potentially expanding into the metaverse.
According to a filing Thursday with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the Department of the Air Force has registered “SpaceVerse,” defined as “a secure digital metaverse that converges into terrestrial, space-based physical and digital realities and provides synthetic and simulated training, test and operating environments. It is not clear if this initiative is related to the US Space Force, which, according to its website, is “organized” within the Air Force but operates as a “separate branch of the armed forces.”
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The metaverse-related trademark filing followed several firms, including credit card companies Mastercard and American Express, shoe and clothing maker Nike, and the New York Stock Exchange. Various applications included trademarking the use of logos and branding in the virtual environment, as well as authenticating certain files with NFT tokens.
Some major brands have launched virtual stores or other user experiences following Facebook’s October 2021 announcement that the social media giant will be rebranded as Meta. In February, US bank JPMorgan entered the metaverse by launching a virtual room in the blockchain-based online world of Decentraland. Samsung has also launched a virtual store modeled after a real store in New York.
Of the six branches of the U.S. military — the Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Army, Navy, Air Force, and Space Force — the last half have previously announced major initiatives to implement blockchain technology or otherwise adopt digital assets. In June 2021, the Space Force said they would be releasing patch and coin versions of NFTs designed to launch one of their vehicles. The US Navy also signed a $1.5 million deal with Consensus Networks to develop a blockchain-enabled logistics system called HealthNet.
