Bethesda Doesn't Enjoy Being "Forced" into Mojang Lawsuit

[Coffinshaker]

seems to me the term "forced" is being thrown about a bit loosely here. why are they "forced" into anything?

 

[SyphonX]

What if someone wanted to make a game that was nothing but scrolls, and the usage of scrolls thereof. Like playing cards, except scrolls.

It would be their entire game. Just scrolls, like Magic: the Gathering is just cards. Shall they be forced to rename it to,
"Rolled Parchment in Cylindrical form that is Written Upon for the Antiquated-Purpose of Recording Information"; patent-pending.

 

[Turtleboy1017]

Read through the pages of comments. By page 4 you'll probably see things differently. If anything, Notch is the one who should be blamed for this whole thing. Read above.

That is simply your opinion.

You completely glance over the fact that Zenimax/Bethesda are laying claim to the single word "Scrolls", when their actual trademark title is "The Elder Scrolls". It is an absurd waste of time, resources and is insulting that the filing exists in the first place.

Your hatred for Notch stems from the fact that you are shilling for the corporate angle, and you feel that no one should have any reason to ever challenge a corporation's absurdity. There seems to be a growing number of people that belong to a generation that sees corporate power as "absolute" and binding. That if you don't kowtow to their will, then it is simply "your fault" no matter what.

I am also aware of the patents, and legal obligations that the lawyers supposedly need to follow regardless if it is totally necessary. This doesn't change the fact that it is absurd and it needs to be interjected with common sense. The phrase, "If someone told you to jump off a bridge.." applies here.

Did you really read through? I'm not going to start a debate or anything. Over the internet it's a stupid waste of time.

So to clarify, you understand that the reason they are trying to fight this is that if it does indeed go through, that means that any hold they had on the term "scrolls" in a video game title is gone. I could then make a game called "Elder Trilogy 6: Skoblivion", and proceed to sell T-shirts, app store games, even a full fledged console game if i wanted to.

And If Bethesda tried to fight me on it, I could use this previous case against Notch to argue that Elder is simply a part of The Elder Scrolls, just like Scrolls is just a part of it. And then by using this court case as ammo, I could theoretically sue anyone who decided to use the term "Elder" in their games and cause headache for them too.

It's nobodies fault but the office of patents and trademarks. I'm not a huge fan of Notch, but that doesn't change the fact that he's facing a problem head on that could have VERY easily been avoided. If he agreed to change the name to something else, Bethesda would have no reason to sue Notch.

And that's all I have to say. If you see what I'm trying to say, cool. If you still disagree, I'm afraid I think you still don't fully grasp the situation at hand. If you claim you do, but still disagree, then there is no point in continuing.

 

[SilentHunter7]

And they've proven a lack of will to come to any sort of legal agreement/compromise with their target in question, which is a very dubious choice of targets indeed. This could have been resolved without Bethesda going all Edge on that @ss.

Um, they didn't choose the target? If you were the head of Bethesda, and you choice was Defend your mark, or lose the rights to the Elder Scrolls name, you can't honestly tell me you'd forfeit that trademark.

But they come out looking like the bad guys because they're the herp derp big money man coming down on the little guy. No, they are bound to file a suit when the USPTO finds that a potential trademark conflict exists, because as I said, if they don't sue, it establishes a precedent. Some Tom will come out with "Skyrings", and all his lawyers have to do is "Well this Notch guy got away with it, why are we so different?"

I submit the evidence of "Mockbusters". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mockbuster

Far more blatant "trademark conflicts" than Edge or Scrolls has to offer; and all blissfully, shamelessly scamming their way around the world. This is just more suits with hammers looking for anything that resembles a nail.

Precendent? What, so because there is a "Star Wars", should we sue anyone who uses the words "Star" or "War(s)" in their titles? While a battle to the death between the Star Wars and Star Trek brands would be amusing, could that be anything but an awful joke in a court of law? If those two industry titans can get over it, Bethesda sure as hell can and should.

And, what's your point? Because they don't want to defend their mark from dilution, or in Star Trek's case, can't because Star Wars has been around too long, nobody should? The USPTO is telling them that Scrolls: could potentially dilute the Elder Scrolls: trademark, what the fuck do you want them to do? If they drop it, that CAN'T sue anyone else for trademark dilution. Well they can, but you're giving any defendants a legal bazooka to fight you with. Suddenly they're in the same boat as those movie studios you referred to.

Only if someone uses the Elder Scrolls name verbatim would they have a case. I don't personally see an infringement here, but I don't get to make that call. The patent office does, and they have. Don't blame Bethesda for playing the game, blame the government for making the rules.

 

[Strazdas]

wow what a stupid law. so if i make a game "crazy tennis" and copyright it, noone can ever make a game with word tennis anymore. yay.

And, what's your point? Because they don't want to defend their mark from dilution, or in Star Trek's case, can't because Star Wars has been around too long, nobody should?

Actualyl star trek was around way before star wars was even on a drawing board.

 

[SmugFrog]

Using this logic you now cannot name a game:
Gears
War
Bad
Company
Call
Duty
Elder
Scrolls
Grand
Theft
Auto
Need
Speed
etc

I could go on. Obviously it does not take long before most of the dictionary is gone.

I bought Rage thinking it was a sequel to Streets of Rage. Something needs to be done or everyone in the world will be confused and the next thing you know, fish are wearing pants! Won't someone think of the children?

 

[ph0b0s123]

-snip-

I bought Rage thinking it was a sequel to Streets of Rage. Something needs to be done or everyone in the world will be confused and the next thing you know, fish are wearing pants! Won't someone think of the children?

Oh man, now I want a sequel to streets of rage... Or reboot / remake since there was already Streets of Rage 2.

It looks like the lesson is, if you want to trademark a game title that is similar to another game, make sure that other game came out some time ago. Though I am sure I am being dumb and there already is a statue of limitations to trademarks removing them when they have not been used for a long time.

 

[Drake Barron]

Christ Marcus, if Bethesda is going to be such little bitches about this, then just be the bigger man and rename your game already. You can even keep "Scrolls" in the title, just name it something like "Scrolls of " or something like that.

Notch has already offered to do this actually, Bethesda told him it wasn't good enough. They are bound and determined to go to court no matter how much Mojang tries to negotiate and find a compromise.

See, the real problem we've got here is that there are so many of you that know so little about trademark law and still feel the need to comment. Trying to lay claim to a single word featured in the title of your media form is pure evil. It's nefarious, it's wrong, and it doesn't "defend your trademark." Nor does it make it so that you can't have a lawsuit after that if someone else makes a title more similar.

To the thousands of people on the internet (including the very misinformed author of this article): by letting this go by, someone could NOT do something like "Eldan Scolls: Skyrin." There's this idea in trademark law that similar names must be at least 66% different or it's a trademark violation. However. This does NOT apply to SINGLE words that appear in the dictionary. Any fictional word (such as Skyrim) is fully protected and anything similar to this could be prosecuted as it is a FICTIONAL word. Anything that attempted to copy the flavor of the Elder Scrolls series by slightly altering the name could STILL be prosecuted. But someone using a single word from your title is not in violation.

At everyone talking about the US turning down their trademark request. A few things to remember. First of all, that's the opinion of 1 worker. Mojang could (and probably will) contest this and in all likelihood will get the trademark. The US Patent Office tends to err on the side of safety for old trademarks on the first attempt; however once appealed they often grant the trademark. It's simple procedure.

ph0b0s123 Has the real issue pinned down very well. If this were to go through and Bethesda DID win the case it would set precedent for hundreds of thousands of cases world wide to retroactively sue anyone in any similar genre who used any word that appeared in any title of anything they had published. Most of you trolling this thread cannot even imagine the kind of devastation this would cause to the arts as a whole and to international trade law in specific.

inb4 "Notch is popular so I don't like him because I don't wanna be with the mainstream crowd" and also "Notch didn't post the latest update to Minecraft fast enough so I don't like him because I'm impatient about a game in beta that has a set release date I could have just waited for"

There's bigger issues at hand.

 

[Drake Barron]

Also wanted to take half a second to have a laugh at this post by @turtleboy1017:

"Did you really read through? I'm not going to start a debate or anything. Over the internet it's a stupid waste of time."

I just wanted to point out that this topic is a discussion of a controversial issue and therefor qualifies as a debate. Furthermore you posted your opinion in the thread (as whoever said that was very correct in pointing out, you offensively stated your opinion like it was fact) and took part in the discussion. If you don't want to be any part of a debate on the internet then stop wasting your time and everyone elses' and don't post.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

The biggest load of shit, actually, on glancing through the article again, is this:

[Regarding] THE ELDER SCROLLS marks, the applicant has merely deleted the term ELDER from the registered mark. The mere deletion of wording from a registered mark may not be sufficient to overcome a likelihood of confusion.

I wonder if when games retailer 'GAME' went to apply for a trademark they were refused on the grounds they were merely 'deleting' a term from the trademark 'Gamestop'.

I wonder if Peter Molyneux had trouble getting Fable 3 published because he merely 'deleted' a term from the browser game 'DragonFable'.

I fail to understand how any sane person in the employment of the patent office could think that the way to apply any kind of trademark law, no matter even a law as ridiculous as US trademark law, to a case like this was to begin from the position that a new trademark was merely a shorter form of an existing trademark. There is something extremely fishy about this that makes it extremely difficult for me to accept Bethesda's 'We're being forced into this' claim at face value.

 

[duchaked]

guess their lawyers gotta be lawyers

can't imagine it's making the PR folks' jobs any easier lol

 

[mjc0961]

I bought Rage thinking it was a sequel to Streets of Rage. Something needs to be done or everyone in the world will be confused and the next thing you know, fish are wearing pants! Won't someone think of the children?

OMG you're right! Why isn't SEGA suing id and/or ZeniMax over this? After all, they are FORCED to sue to protect their trademark or whatever, right Bethesda? Obviously not seeing as they aren't. So maybe Bethesda needs to shut the fuck up with these lame ass excuses about being forced. You aren't forced to do anything, you're just doing it because apparently you've been hanging out with Tim Langdell for too long. News flash Bethesda: Langdell lost.

 

[Normandyfoxtrot]

I bought Rage thinking it was a sequel to Streets of Rage. Something needs to be done or everyone in the world will be confused and the next thing you know, fish are wearing pants! Won't someone think of the children?

OMG you're right! Why isn't SEGA suing id and/or ZeniMax over this? After all, they are FORCED to sue to protect their trademark or whatever, right Bethesda? Obviously not seeing as they aren't. So maybe Bethesda needs to shut the fuck up with these lame ass excuses about being forced. You aren't forced to do anything, you're just doing it because apparently you've been hanging out with Tim Langdell for too long. News flash Bethesda: Langdell lost.

I suspect Sega has already allowed their trademark to expire or simply don't intend to use it again in the future.

As for the case If the US trademark office told me my "insert trademarked property here" was in danger from "insert shorter named trademarked property" even if their stupid you'd bet all the asses on earth I'd sue, their is too much money tried up in the trademark and the product itself to lose it over something stupid.

 

[Ygddrasil]

If Bethesda wins, I'm tradmarking ":". If Notch wins, I'm making "Mine Craft".

 

[Wargamer]

The silliest thing about this is that noone actually refers to these games as "The Elder Scrolls."

I sympathise with Bethesda, a little bit, but it's not the title of Mojang's game that needs changed. It's these idiotic laws.

Had to quote this because it's so damn true. I heard of Morrowind, knew it had a sequel called Oblivion, but (because I'd not actually played the games) it was not until Skyrim became advertised that I actually clocked on that the game SERIES was called "The Elder Scrolls".

 

[imperfect number]

Ok it's starting to make a bit more sence now. Basicly whats happened is the US patents office has said that scrolls infringes on elder scrolls trade mark so Bethsuda has to sue so others can't come along and use this as a legal presedent of them not protecting their trademark. They have to take it to court and lose so that the US patent office gets off both Mojang and Bethsudas' backs and both games can be released hence the courts being used are the Sweedish who it would seem are more likely to side with Mojang than an American court.

Long story short the only arseholes in this case would appear to be the beuracrats of the American patent and trademarks commision forsing the issue.

If true, this is the most wonderfully fucked up legal proceeding I have witnessed.
Assuming Bethsuda doesn't think 'Scrolls: (Subtitle)' would actually be an infringement on their trademark, like most of the poster here think, then what they are doing is trying to get the US patent office to accept their point of view. Since appealing within the office itself clearly doesn't work (Hurray for Bureaucracy), they have to get another government body to tell the USPO they are wrong, and the way to do that is to fail at making the USPO's case.

 

[darknessknight1000]

"You Should have acted they're already here"
"The Elder Scrolls (Scrolls) told of their return (Bethesda)"
"For the time after oblivion (Minecraft)opened
"There defeat was mereley a delay"
"Then the sons of Skyrim (sandbox games) have spilled their own blood(money)"
"But no-one wanted to believe"
"Believe they(Bethesda)even existed"
"And when the truth (Lawsuit) finally dawned
"It dawns in fire (Court)"
"BUT. There is one they (Bethesda) fear, in their tongue he's called Dovahkiin (Markus)
DRAGONBORN (NOTCH)!
(Chorus)

 

[Do4600]

It sounds like the only people that want this lawsuit are the lawyers.