The Japanese patent office has reportedly denied a trademark for variations of the phrases “Yukkuri Jikkyou”, “Yukkuri Commentary” and “Yukkuri Gekijo”.

For those unaware, these terms are used to describe a genre of Japanese “Let’s Play” style videos.

All these terms refer to a genre of videos where gameplay is accompanied by comedic text-to-speech commentary popularized by “Yukkuri” memes. Yukkuris themselves are disembodied and malformed heads of Touhou characters (although the meme has expanded beyond that franchise).

It’s unclear what standing the filer had to try and trademark the video style. After all, Yukkuris are based off of Touhou characters, and they clearly didn’t own the text-to-speech used in making the videos.

You can see an example of a Yukkuri Jikkyou video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Whl2QPe51uk

Japanese video sharing site Niconico (formerly Nico Nico Douga) shared a statement applauding the patent office’s decision. Note that in the (machine) translation, “Slowly” is a literal translation of “Yukkuri”.

[Notice about the “Slowly ○○ ” trademark]

On February 13, we received a notice of reasons for refusal from the Patent Office regarding the trademark applications for “Yukuri Jikkyou”, “Yukuri Commentary” and “Yukuri Gekijo”. The content indicated in the notice of reasons for refusal is generally consistent with our opinion, and we welcome this decision.

Our company believes that “slowly ○○ ” is widely used as an indication of video genres, categories, and video content, and should not be monopolized by specific companies or individuals. We are still considering specific measures to be taken in the future, but first of all, we would like to inform you of the progress we are pleased to make.