Elite: Dangerous developer Frontier has registered a trademark for something called Elite: Deadly.

NeoGAF user "ekim" (via PCGamesN) spotted the trademark on the website of the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM), which handles trademarks in Europe. It was registered by Maguire Boss, an entity also based in Cambridge that has secured trademarks for previous Frontier games.

Deadly is one step above Dangerous in Elite's pilot ranking system. The final and top ranking is Elite.

So what is Elite: Deadly? Some have suggested it's a companion app. Others an expansion to Elite: Dangerous. Frontier declined to comment when contacted by Eurogamer. But it may relate to a previous trademark Frontier registered last year.

That was for the word "Thargoid", which is the name given to the Elite universe's insectoid race who originate from somewhere outside known space.

Thargoids first made an appearance in the original Elite game, but vanished circa Frontier. In July 2014, Frontier chief David Braben told The Average Gamer he wanted Elite: Dangerous version of the Thargoids "to be as terrifying and as alien as we can make them".

Watch this space, then.