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

The street is like nameless individuals. A corpo by contrast is the giant vertical sky-scrapers next to it. Total exact opposites. I don't see it as a clever joke when attached to a hostile trade-mark message. By using it in the opposite way from its actual meaning you embodied the entire antagonist cyberpunk corpo ethos in real life.

> not some corporate attempt to pass itself off as counterculture

Perhaps not, but it was sent on Autodesk company letterhead...

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?