"One Piece" apparently not licensed by Funimation after all.

>From AnimeNewsNetwork -

  http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/article.php?id=4404

  Following reports that FUNimation had lost the One Piece license, ANN 
  contacted them today to find out whether they had in fact lost the 
  license or not. The surprise, was an explanation that they had in fact 
  never licensed One Piece and that the whole thing was a misunderstanding.

  At Anime Expo New York in 2002 Gen Fukunaga discussed "Great Anime coming 
  to America" and mentioned One Piece as one such title that was coming to 
  America. Many of the journalists present, including but not limited to 
  Anime News Network's own reporters, misconstrued this as an announcement 
  that it was FUNimation that was bringing One Piece to America, in other 
  words, that they had licensed the title.

  We were informed today that the license for One Piece has not been awarded 
  and that FUNimation "Remains one of the top companies in negotiations for 
  the property."

  In 2003 ANN implemented a policy of showing all our convention reports 
  to the companies before posting them, but at the time of AX 2002 this policy 
  was not in place. 

Well, crap.  I thought the first 18 episodes that I saw before it was
licensed were pretty good, and were improving with each story arc.  I guess
AoD was given bad info as well  -

  http://www.animeondvd.com/licenselist/O.php

And apparently Funimation registered the "One Piece" trademark in Apr 2002,
but abandoned it in Jul 2003 -

  
http://forums.animeondvd.com/printthread.php?Board=generalanimeforum&main=267458&type=post

So, Viz doesn't have "Hikaru no Go" after all, and now Funimation doesn't
have "One Piece" after all.  I'd be wondering whether ADV really has the
remaining "Slayers" movies after all, were it not for the fact that I've
personally seen the second movie for sale in stores.

- dbm