Autodesk Filed for Cyberspace. Gibson Pushed Back

Autodesk applied to register "cyberspace" as a trademark in 1989, Eric Gullichsen said in an October 2026 Colo account.

The filing covered work at the Autodesk Research Lab after a visit to Scott Fisher at NASA Ames.

The prototype ran on a 386 with Matrox graphics cards, a VPL EyePhone and a Polhemus tracker at six to ten frames per second.

William Gibson, who coined the term in his 1984 novel Neuromancer, had lawyers send Autodesk a letter that the company ignored.

Gibson later told Gullichsen in Barcelona that "Autodesk is not the street," repurposing his own line about the street finding its own uses.

The retaliation story that Gibson tried to trademark "Eric Gullichsen" was a prank started by Timothy Leary, Gullichsen said.

That rumor was later embellished by John Perry Barlow and amplified by Rudy Rucker before becoming accepted history.

Gullichsen met Gibson at Art Futura 1990 in Barcelona after leaving Autodesk for his startup Sense8 Corporation.

The Colo account gives no filing number, registration outcome, or USPTO status for the Autodesk application as of October 2026.

The firsthand account was recirculated on developer site daily.dev in October 2026, per that site's repost of the Colo piece.