---
title: William Gibson and the trademarking of cyberspace
link: https://colo.to/cyberspace.html
source: hnrss-org
published: 2026-10-18T23:37:57Z
updated: 2026-10-18T23:37:57Z
first_seen: 2026-10-19T06:04:04.553061734Z
authors:
- Eric_Gullichsen
content: extracted
html: 2026-10-18-william-gibson-and-the-trademarking-of-cyberspace.html
remote_preview:
  url: https://colo.to/pix/guell.jpg
  alt: Photograph at Park Güell in Barcelona
---

![Photograph at Park Güell in Barcelona](https://colo.to/pix/guell.jpg)\
Park Güell, Barcelona, 1990\
Michael Girard, Deborah Gibson, Timothy Leary, Eric Gullichsen, William Gibson.\
Susan Amkraut obscured behind Deborah

## The Cyberspace Rumor

From the first days of the web, people have repeated the story that Autodesk trademarked "cyberspace" and Gibson retaliated by trademarking "Eric Gullichsen".

## Autodesk Cyberspace

In 1989, I was working at the Autodesk Research Lab on early virtual reality, a project started after we visited Scott Fisher at NASA Ames. Our nascent system was a 386 with a pair of Matrox graphics cards on the ISA bus, a VPL EyePhone, a Polhemus tracker, and a data glove. It ran at six to ten frames per second on models with a few hundred polygons. Sluggish, but marginally enough to get us [Through the Looking Glass](https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_69.html).

Our motto was “Reality Isn’t Enough Any More”.

## Timothy Leary

I was also spending a lot of time hanging out with Timothy Leary, whose suggestion was responsible for my quitting my job at [MCC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microelectronics_and_Computer_Technology_Corporation) and moving to California. I’d met him at the Hackers 2.0 conference in 1986 and gave him a ride to the San Jose airport. We became fast friends, and I did quite a lot of writing with him, most of which remains unpublished. But that’s a story for later. Timothy, who appears in a samizdat [Autodesk virtual reality video](https://archive.org/details/Timothy_Leary_Archives_005.dv), nicknamed our VR lab “Cyberia”.

Timothy was a tremendous fan of Gibson, and considered his seminal 1984 novel *Neuromancer* extremely prescient about the impending digital revolution.

As our VR developments crept slowly towards becoming a product, we at Autodesk applied to register a trademark “cyberspace”. Timothy informed me Gibson was plenty miffed about this, so I wrote him what I felt was a conciliatory letter,[1](https://colo.to/cyberspace.html#fn1) though ending snarkily by quoting his own words, “The street finds its own use for things.”

In reply, Gibson had his lawyers send Autodesk a letter [2](https://colo.to/cyberspace.html#fn2). Which I recall we ignored.

Timothy - ever the incorrigible prankster - circulated the rumor that Gibson was attempting to trademark “Eric Gullichsen” in retaliation. Then Barlow, for reasons of his own, [embellished that rumor](https://w2.eff.org/Misc/Publications/John_Perry_Barlow/HTML/being_in_nothingness.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com). Later amplified by [Rudy Rucker](https://www.rudyrucker.com/transrealbooks/collectedessays/#:~:text=%E2%80%9D%20William%20Gibson%20was%20rather,some%20demos%20for%20Autodesk%20Cyberspace).

## Art Futura 1990

About a year later - after I'd already left Autodesk for my VR startup, Sense8 Corporation - we were invited to the inaugural Art Futura 1990 in Barcelona. And there, in the lobby of some swank hotel, I met Gibson. He opined in a laconic drawl that although the street finds its own use for things *“Autodesk is not the street”*.

There was plenty of cava consumed in the small hours before the time Barcelonans sit down to eat endless rounds of tapas. As I recall, after all the many Art Futura parties we'd put the matter behind us, or close enough.

And there was a memorable visit to Gaudi’s Park Güell, whose giant lizard of crazy-quilt ceramic appears in *Count Zero*.

So: Autodesk did [apply to register](https://uspto.report/TM/73816876) Cyberspace, and Gibson really did object. But Gibson trying to trademark Eric Gullichsen was Timothy Leary's prank, propagated until it became accepted history.