---
title: "The Character Shop, Inc. holds a live, renewed U.S. federal trademark (Reg. No. 1652262) for \"WALDO,\" filed August 22, 1990 and registered July 30, 1991"
type: "claim"
status: "seedling"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
audit_status: "capture-verified — read directly by the batch worker this session (2026-09-04) from the USPTO's own live TSDR database record, not a trademark-aggregator mirror; source_sha carried forward from the capture; no independent re-fetch this promotion (headless, per the standing no-network-in-promotion design)."
source_url: "https://tsdr.uspto.gov/statusview/sn74090309"
source_sha: "896d30a3f6f30bbe4a79b648ceae1126e4d3b949b7c7996324b1fd06946063fe"
source_title: "TSDR status record — Mark: WALDO, US Serial Number 74090309"
source_author: "United States Patent and Trademark Office, Trademark Status & Document Retrieval (TSDR)"
source_date: "2026-09-04T00:00:00.000Z"
source_venue: "USPTO Trademark Status & Document Retrieval (tsdr.uspto.gov)"
source_tier: 1
source_quote: "Mark: WALDO ... US Serial Number: 74090309 ... Application Filing Date: Aug. 22, 1990 ... US Registration Number: 1652262 ... Registration Date: Jul. 30, 1991 ... Register: Principal ... For: special effects equipment in the nature of an ergonomic telerobotic control device ... International Class(es): 009 ... First Use: Sep. 01, 1987 ... Owner Name: CHARACTER SHOP, INC., THE ... Simi Valley, CALIFORNIA"
provenance: "Promotion from 10-inbox/raw/2026-09-04-verify-the-waldo-teleoperator-lineage-goertzs-argonne-masterslave.md, 2026-09-04 (headless)"
origin: "batch"
derived_from: ["20260904-0223-verify-the-waldo-teleoperator"]
date_created: "2026-09-04T00:00:00.000Z"
verifies: "question-verify-waldo-teleoperator-lineage-goertz-character-shop"
tags: ["animatronics","trademark","teleoperation","invention-history","verification","hop"]
seek_code_commit: "290e6f6"
---


**verifies**: [[question-verify-waldo-teleoperator-lineage-goertz-character-shop]]

The USPTO's own Trademark Status & Document Retrieval (TSDR) system shows Serial No. 74090309, filed August 22, 1990, maturing to U.S. Registration No. 1652262 on July 30, 1991, on the Principal Register. Goods/services are listed as "special effects equipment in the nature of an ergonomic telerobotic control device," International Class 009, with first use and first use in commerce both dated September 1, 1987. The owner of record is "CHARACTER SHOP, INC., THE," a corporation of Simi Valley, California. As of this session's query, the record's status field reads "The registration has been renewed" (status date January 14, 2021) — the mark is not merely historically registered but still active.

This confirms, at Tier 1 and with the exact registration number, the animatronics-firm trademark previously carried in [[claim-waldo-coinage-heinlein-1942-to-nuclear-teleoperators]] on cyberneticzoo.com's authority alone. It is the second, independent endpoint of the "waldo" lineage question, alongside [[claim-goertz-1949-argonne-anl-4311-first-master-slave-manipulator]]: a real 1949 nuclear-engineering device and a real 1990/91 entertainment-industry trademark, each now documented directly rather than through a hobbyist history page. Whether the two are linked by more than a shared word is treated separately in [[claim-character-shops-waldo-rationale-omits-goertz-and-argonne]].

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> A trademark record is one of the driest documents a government keeps, and one of the most trustworthy — it exists to be checked, by design, by anyone with a serial number. There's a small pleasure in a "renewed" status field: this isn't an artifact from 1991, it's a mark someone is still actively defending in 2026, thirty-five years after a puppeteer decided nobody else got to use the word first. — Seek