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

[subtlefuge]

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.

Well, the title of Mojang's game does needs to be changed, but that's just because it's boring.

 

[subtlefuge]

I don't get why Mojang doesn't just add a word or two, so there is a clear difference. In terms of court proceedings, Bethesda makes a great point. You throw a little leeway legally, and it can fuck up future cases from then on out. So yeah, while it may seem trivial and childish, it does have its place here. I'm sure it will be resolved pretty quickly and without much court interaction.

Notch actually offered to add a sub-title, like Scrolls: The Metallic Bucket. But apparently, it wasn't valid.

However, "Scrolls of The Metallic Bucket" would be valid. Notch isn't offering solutions as much as he is feeding the flames against the wrong people.

Saying that you have offered up olive branches that are either addressed to the wrong people, or do not change the fundamental issue makes for pretty poor peacemaking.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

Although Notch's ideas are diplomatic, international copyright law is rarely clear-cut enough for a 50/50 compromise. [...] This conundrum gets even more confusing, since the lawsuit will take place in Swedish courts, and U.S. copyright legality may not hold much water overseas.

Mojang's desired use of the word "scrolls" seems innocent enough, but if Bethesda does not protect its copyright, other companies could produce deliberately-confusing titles like The Eldest Scrolls: Skyrings and leave Bethesda with no legal recourse. "Failing to protect a trademark could be damaging to an owner's rights," said Angela Bozzuti, a trademark law attorney. "Not only could it result in actual consumer confusion, but it could also weaken the strength of the mark in the marketplace. Furthermore ... it will likely weaken [Bethesda's] mark and make protection difficult and limited."

Yes, but until those laws change, Bethesda doesn't really have a choice. If they don't fight this, then they can't fight the guy who makes "The Older Scrolls: Flyrim." It's not Bethesda just being ornery; the US Trademark office said that Notch's offer to add a subhead to Scrolls (i.e. Scrolls: The Something-or-Other) wasn't enough to differentiate it from The Elder Scrolls. Given that ruling, and the vagaries of copyright law, there's not a whole lot of wiggle room here.

I don't know if this has already been pointed out, because I can't go through nearly a dozen pages of comments right now, but this has nothing to do with copyright, despite most of the posts saying so (including the original news post itself).

I don't know enough about how it works internationally to be able to say with any confidence how it works anywhere else, but at least in the US, you don't have to defend your copyright to maintain it, or even register it in the first place (although if you do register it, it does grant you additional protections and makes things easier for you in general). Copyright does not cover things like this, though; it can apply to the artwork, the music, the code, or even the game as a whole, but the title itself is strictly in trademark territory.

In the US, at least, you have to be much more aggressive about defending trademarks or risk losing them. If you don't actively use it for a certain period of time, you can lose it. If you don't defend it when someone else even appears to possibly be infringing on it, you can sometimes be at risk of losing it. A lot of the time when it seems like someone's being a dick about lawyering up over defending trademarks, it's because of how people have lost them in the past from not doing that, especially genericized trademarks [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genericized_trademark]. Yes, someone actually managed to lose the trademarks for things like zippers and escalators and heroin.

So yeah, nothing to do with copyright at all, and the reason they do stuff like this a lot of the time is that the legal system pretty much requires them to.

 

[tehroc]

You can make games with those titles, but you cant trademark them for personal profit and expect to get away with it.

"GEARS OF WAR" is a registered trademark of Epic Games, Inc.

"GOD OF WAR" is a registered trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment of America Inc.

Those two are much closer than "The Elder Scrolls" and "Scrolls" are, but I don't recall any trademark disputes there.

It's just a case of bullying. Epic wouldn't sue SCEA, it would cost both companies millions of dollars. Zenimax think they can push people around with their legion of lawyers. If Activision was trademarking "Scrolls", Zenimax lawyers wouldn't do shit as they wouldn't have a superior lawyer team. It would cost way too much money and the game would never be released being trapped in a litigation quagmire.

 

[rustybroomhandle]

And why is Blizzard not suing over World of Warplanes?

 

[Weaver]

I don't fully understand, this article claims that only one word is removed "elder" yet, two words are removed "the elder". Is "the" not a word any more?

The game is called scrolls, not "the scrolls".

 

[Mortuorum]

This is a business matter based on how trademark law works and it will continue to be dealt with by lawyers who understand it, not by me or our developers....

The lawyers understand perfectly... that the longer they grad this out, the more money they make.

God damned laywers.

 

[GoodApprentice]

Notch, just change the GD name of this unknown IP already. Who exactly are you trying to impress?

 

[GoodApprentice]

Judging from that picture of the courthouse, I figure they used blocks of glass and white sheep's wool for its construction. Hmmm...

 

[renegade7]

Cus kustmers er stooped rite?

Wow, I just lost a lot of faith in the patent office...how could anyone possible be stupid enough to confuse the two games? No one even calls the series "The Elder Scrolls"

 

[teisjm]

hmmm. Gotta make some tiny useless flash game, and find a common word, put it in the name, and sell it to some big company next time, they wanna make a game with that word in the title.

Wonders what would've happened if anyone had been smart enough to somehow secure the copyright on the word War in game titles...

 

[teisjm]

hmmm. Gotta make some tiny useless flash game, and find a common word, put it in the name, and sell it to some big company next time, they wanna make a game with that word in the title.

Wonders what would've happened if anyone had been smart enough to somehow secure the copyright on the word War in game titles...

 

[veloper]

You can make games with those titles, but you cant trademark them for personal profit and expect to get away with it.

"GEARS OF WAR" is a registered trademark of Epic Games, Inc.

"GOD OF WAR" is a registered trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment of America Inc.

Those two are much closer than "The Elder Scrolls" and "Scrolls" are, but I don't recall any trademark disputes there.

It's just a case of bullying. Epic wouldn't sue SCEA, it would cost both companies millions of dollars. Zenimax think they can push people around with their legion of lawyers. If Activision was trademarking "Scrolls", Zenimax lawyers wouldn't do shit as they wouldn't have a superior lawyer team. It would cost way too much money and the game would never be released being trapped in a litigation quagmire.

This.

Also consider Dawn of War.

Someone else on these boards even pointed out a DVD series called "Transmorphers", the case designed to look like the Michael Bay Transformer movies. Even this is totally legit.

 

[ZephrC]

Bullshit. Absolute Bullshit.

First of all, 'scrolls' is a simple English word. Bethesda doesn't get to own it. I seem to recall there being something about that recently. Something to do with a word like brink, or razor or some such thing. Can't quite seem to recall right now.

Anyway, Scrolls isn't going to be even remotely similar to any of the Elder Scrolls games, and anyone who's so stupid they can't tell a trading card game from a big budget RPG is too stupid to have their opinion matter in a court.

And really, for fucks sake, who even buys a game because it says 'The Elder Scrolls' on the box? Nobody, that's who. Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim are all huge names in gaming, and any future games in the series are likely to be huge as well, but 'The Elder Scrolls" is just something they stick on the box in tiny print that nobody but huge nerds gives a shit about.

Dammit, this absolute and total bullshit is like somebody claiming a comedy called 'Father' is infringing on The Godfather's trademark. It's either the stupidest thing ever, or a blatant lie. I'm not sure which would be worse coming from a company like Bethesda.

 

[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?"

 

[rustybroomhandle]

Notch, just change the GD name of this unknown IP already. Who exactly are you trying to impress?

It's the principle of the thing. You might be content to bend over whenever someone threatens you, but there absolutely no nobility in that. This whole thing stinks. Might or might not be Bethesda doing the stinking. We could all blame this on the legal system, but it doesn't matter. It's all symptomatic of something in life that's broken.

Just because things are the way they are does not mean we have to accept them.

Mojang can afford to fight it, and damn well they should.

 

[Treblaine]

It's called PRECEDENT. If someone else can, EVERYONE CAN. Prepare for the Eldest Scrolls, etc. In the eyes of the law, there's no varying levels of similarity, and no difference between "Scrolls" and "Eldest Scrolls". They HAVE to defend it, or lose their trademark. And don't say Notch is a little guy, because THAT'S a bare-faced lie.

Uhh the precedent has ALREADY BEEN SET

The precedent is: "Trademarked titles of different video games can share identical words or even identical sequences of words and the trademarks of ALL PARTIES still stand without question"

As is the case with "Black" and "Black Ops"

"Rage" and "Streets of Rage"

"Dead Island" and "Dead Rising"

Notch is a little guy. Zenimax is a billion-dollar company, Mojang is just about breaking 30 million.

"A millions dollars isn't exactly a lot of money these days"

 

[Treblaine]

You know what you are saying is complete lie?

In no way would or could Mojang be able to stop Zenimax from continuing to use their "The Elder Scrolls" trademark. I have spent more than 5 minutes looking into this. You clearly haven't as you call this COPYRIGHT trolling when it is Trademark, you clearly don't even know what you are talking about.

Trademarking "The Elder Scrolls" does not give Zenimax right over the name "Scrolls"

Also the inverse, a trademark of "Scrolls" does not give Mojang the right over "The Elder Scrolls".

Picky picky, it was mentioned several times that this comes under international copyright law so the best reason I can see to call it trademark trolling is that it's alliterative. More of a minor mistake than getting "lie" mixed up with "fact". Because if there's a dispute over ownership of the name (which there totally would be if Bethesda just let Mojang have exclusive rights to the word Scrolls) that would give Mojang the right to get Skyrim pulled off the shelves while the lawyers fought it out. Yeah Bethesda would almost certainly win but that would do little to ease the pain of losing several millions of sales from the disruption of Skyrim's worldwide release.

Nonsense. The trademark owners of "Black" has zero authority to pull "COD: Black Ops" from store shelves.

Mojang would have no authority to pull "The Elder Scrolls" games from shelves, and NOR DOES ZENIMAX have the authority to do the same to Mojang, as that is what THEY re demanding - what you are paranoid that Mojang could do. Zenimax is only able to threaten this with the full force of a legal team against a small understaffed indie upstart.