--- title: William Gibson and the trademarking of cyberspace description: A firsthand account from Eric Gullichsen, a member of Autodesk's early virtual reality lab, recounts the real story behind the 1989-1990 cyberspace trademark... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/william-gibson-and-the-trademarking-of-cyberspace-n7hdpehp7 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: William Gibson and the trademarking of cyberspace | daily.dev og:description: A firsthand account from Eric Gullichsen, a member of Autodesk's early virtual reality lab, recounts the real story behind the 1989-1990 cyberspace trademark... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/william-gibson-and-the-trademarking-of-cyberspace-n7hdpehp7 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/n7hDpEhp7.png og:image:alt: William Gibson and the trademarking of cyberspace og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # William Gibson and the trademarking of cyberspace **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 3 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A firsthand account from Eric Gullichsen, a member of Autodesk's early virtual reality lab, recounts the real story behind the 1989-1990 cyberspace trademark controversy involving William Gibson. Autodesk did file to trademark 'cyberspace' for its VR project, and Gibson genuinely objected, sending a lawyer's letter. However, the widely repeated legend that Gibson retaliated by trying to trademark 'Eric Gullichsen' was actually a prank started by Timothy Leary, later embellished by John Perry Barlow and Rudy Rucker. The piece includes details on Autodesk's early VR hardware (386 PC, Matrox graphics cards, VPL EyePhone, Polhemus tracker) and a later reconciliation with Gibson at Art Futura 1990 in Barcelona. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Did William Gibson actually try to trademark someone's name in retaliation over the word cyberspace? No, that part of the story is a myth. Autodesk really did file to trademark 'cyberspace' around 1989 for its virtual reality project, and Gibson genuinely objected through his lawyers, but the rumor that he retaliated by trying to trademark engineer Eric Gullichsen's name was a prank started by Timothy Leary, later spread further by John Perry Barlow and Rudy Rucker. _daily.dev surfaces stories like this for developers who enjoy tracing tech folklore back to its source._ ### What hardware did Autodesk's early virtual reality lab use in the late 1980s Autodesk's Research Lab ran its virtual reality system on a 386 PC fitted with a pair of Matrox graphics cards on the ISA bus, paired with a VPL EyePhone headset, a Polhemus motion tracker, and a data glove. The setup rendered models with only a few hundred polygons at six to ten frames per second. _engineers tracking how far graphics hardware has come often revisit retro builds like this on daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 28 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-19). **TL;DR:** Discussion mostly riffs on the broader pattern of tech companies borrowing sci-fi terminology (Meta/metaverse, Palantir, cyberpunk) without credit, while a side debate erupts over whether Autodesk's trademark attempt and 'street' quip were genuinely clever or tone-deaf corporate overreach. **Sentiment:** 20% positive · 45% mixed · 35% skeptical **The case for** - Some note Gibson's own rejoinder ('Autodesk is not the street') as a sharp comeback that shows the episode had wit on both sides. - A few push back that judging the 1989 Autodesk lab by the company's later reputation is unfair, noting it was a small, countercultural-leaning research group at the time. **The pushback** - Many argue it's hypocritical or tone-deaf for a ~$945M company to invoke 'the street' while trying to trademark a term coined by an author. - Commenters point out the letter was sent on official company letterhead, undermining the claim it wasn't a corporate counterculture pose. - Several are unsettled that a term so clearly invented by Gibson could even be filed as a trademark in the first place. - One commenter calls a participant's defense of the episode as 'conciliatory' outright humorous/ironic. **By community** - hackernews (mixed): Splits between nostalgic tangents about sci-fi-derived corporate naming and a heated side-argument over whether Autodesk's trademark bid and letter were justifiable or hypocritical. **Hottest debate:** Whether Autodesk's 'the street' quip and trademark attempt were a harmless in-joke or hypocritical corporate overreach, argued directly with one of the original participants in the thread. **Open questions** - Why the 'cyberspace' trademark application was accepted at all given Gibson's clear prior coinage of the term. - How broadly companies should be expected to credit or compensate authors whose invented terminology they adopt commercially. **Highlights** > Really? The CYBERSPACE trademark application wasn't rejected. It was abandoned in 1991 after the VR project was cancelled and we developers left Autodesk to start Sense8. The recorded disposition was "abandoned—failure to respond or late response." https://uspto.report/TM/73816876 And yeah, Autodesk was hardly a tiny startup. Its market cap at the end of 1989 was about $945 million. But the "street" line was a deliberately smartass quotation from Gibson in a letter I wrote, not some corporate attempt to pass itself off as counterculture. Gibson subsequently had the better rejoinder: "Autodesk is not the street." Judging the Autodesk Research Lab of 1989 by the reputation of the company Autodesk later became seems rather ahistorical. Even founder John Walker had already declared himself "Bored (sic) of Directors" by 1988: https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_65.html > — [Eric\_Gullichsen on hackernews · 3 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50148584) > Such a tone deaf response. Autodesk tried to trademark a phrase recently invented by an author. They would have had to defend it too. Would they have sued Gibson? Ahistorical my ass Honestly I don't understand how it was accepted? Obviously Gibson invented it? > — [davedx on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50148605) > > not some corporate attempt to pass itself off as counterculture Perhaps not, but it was sent on Autodesk company letterhead... > — [YrRight2PushBac on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50148621) > it's humorous that he thinks that letter was "conciliatory". > — [jrochkind1 on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50148427) > I'm glad it failed to trademark. Autodesk is one of the worst corpo's around. How out of touch for them to make that 'street' joke. They were like a 100+ million company back then. > — [koolala on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50148207) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50146625) · 108 points · 28 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Robert Hooke's "Cyberpunk" letter to Gottfried Leibniz — Drawn In Perspective](https://daily.dev/posts/robert-hooke-s-cyberpunk-letter-to-gottfried-leibniz-drawn-in-perspective-gamexe7wf) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [‘Cyberselfish’ author takes aim at techno-libertarianism as her book returns from the dead](https://daily.dev/posts/cyberselfish-author-takes-aim-at-techno-libertarianism-as-her-book-returns-from-the-dead-hzjeilkoz) · TechCrunch · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [50 years ago, a young Bill Gates took on the ‘software pirates’](https://daily.dev/posts/50-years-ago-a-young-bill-gates-took-on-the-software-pirates--xgq7qalpb) · The New Stack · 44 upvotes · 4 comments --- Tags: [#vr](https://daily.dev/tags/vr) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/william-gibson-and-the-trademarking-of-cyberspace-n7hdpehp7) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"William Gibson and the trademarking of cyberspace","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/william-gibson-and-the-trademarking-of-cyberspace-n7hdpehp7","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/william-gibson-and-the-trademarking-of-cyberspace-n7hdpehp7"},"datePublished":"2026-10-19T01:55:50.689Z","dateModified":"2026-10-19T05:26:50.831Z","description":"A firsthand account from Eric Gullichsen, a member of Autodesk's early virtual reality lab, recounts the real story behind the 1989-1990 cyberspace trademark...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/51f419312b6e1641beb79685cf2acb67?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/51f419312b6e1641beb79685cf2acb67?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Hacker News","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hacker News","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/hn","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/william-gibson-and-the-trademarking-of-cyberspace-n7hdpehp7","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"vr","timeRequired":"PT3M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hacker News","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"William Gibson and the trademarking of cyberspace"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/william-gibson-and-the-trademarking-of-cyberspace-n7hdpehp7#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Did William Gibson actually try to trademark someone's name in retaliation over the word cyberspace?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"No, that part of the story is a myth. Autodesk really did file to trademark 'cyberspace' around 1989 for its virtual reality project, and Gibson genuinely objected through his lawyers, but the rumor that he retaliated by trying to trademark engineer Eric Gullichsen's name was a prank started by Timothy Leary, later spread further by John Perry Barlow and Rudy Rucker. daily.dev surfaces stories like this for developers who enjoy tracing tech folklore back to its source."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What hardware did Autodesk's early virtual reality lab use in the late 1980s","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Autodesk's Research Lab ran its virtual reality system on a 386 PC fitted with a pair of Matrox graphics cards on the ISA bus, paired with a VPL EyePhone headset, a Polhemus motion tracker, and a data glove. The setup rendered models with only a few hundred polygons at six to ten frames per second. engineers tracking how far graphics hardware has come often revisit retro builds like this on daily.dev."}}]} ```