Vince Zampella of Respawn Entertainment apparently filed to trademark 'TITAN' last week. The trademark is listed as "Video and computer game programs; video game discs; video game software", so it is rather safe to assume this is the game these ex-Infinity Ward developers are currently working on under EA's flag. I'm not a lawyer, so there's not much more I can get out of the filing. But you can check the entire document for yourself below for more legal details.

Knowing West and Zampella's development history, I think it's also a rather safe bet that the game will be a multi-platform FPS of some kind, and the name makes it sound like it's more in the vein of the sci-fi genre rather than "modern military shooter". EA has got CryTek, Dice and - up until recently - Danger Close all up in Activision and Call of Duty's throat, so perhaps this is EA's jab at the sci-fi FPS market dominated by Microsoft's Halo franchise? It would be stupid to assume EA are narrow sighted enough to turn yet another developer into a CoD clone factory. But then again, we are talking about EA. Nothing should astound us very much when a statement or action is signed with those two letters put together.

There's been a lot of media coverage surrounding Respawn Entertainment since its inception. The studio was founded when Call of Duty duo Jason West and Vince Zampella got in a bit of a quarrel with Activision over some serious amounts of dosh. The two left Infinity Ward and Activision along with about 40 other employees, and got themselves hired at EA as Respawn.

It hasn't all been green pastures and rivers of honey, however. The media attention has almost exclusively been focused on the legal battle and accusations thrown back and forth between Activision and Respawn. In addition, Jason West recently took the industry by surprise when it was known he would be leaving the company due to personal reasons. In other words, the media attention was never really about any of Respawn's game development. In fact, this trademark file is the first concrete evidence we've got that they are indeed working on a new franchise.

Rumor has it that Respawn Entertainment will be at E3 later this year, which might mean that they are ready to announce their game at this point. Perhaps during EA's conference?