Mojang and Bethesda Settle Scrolls Suit

Strazdas

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May 28, 2011
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Steve the Pocket said:
Kwil said:
This is disappointing. It means Zenimax now has precedent for a broadened trademark including each individual word in their IP title.
Bingo. So now, by extension, EA owns the word "mirror", Valve owns the word "life", Activision owns the word "duty", Ubisoft owns the word "assassin", 2K owns the word "shock", and everyone gets to fight over who owns the word "dead".
basically this. international copyright law is stupid.
 

SL33TBL1ND

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Nov 9, 2008
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Andy Chalk said:
The terms of the settlement award all ownership rights of the Scrolls trademark to Bethesda parent ZeniMax, which has in turn licensed the use of the name to Mojang for its upcoming game and any related add-ons. It may not use the name in a sequel, however, or in any other future game.
Related add-ons, eh? I smell a loophole here. Just make a new game in the series and call it a stand-alone expansion pack. Like with DOW.

Everybody truly did win.
 

disgruntledgamer

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Mar 6, 2012
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K I'm going to trade mark the letter A, B, C, and D. So anyone that uses those letter will have to pay me or be sued. Why not it worked for the tools at Bethesda.
 

odo789

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my roomate's aunt makes $83/hr on the laptop. She has been without work for 8 months but last month her pay was $8682 just working on the laptop for a few hours. Read more on this site...Nuttyrich . com
 

Maze1125

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Oct 14, 2008
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SL33TBL1ND said:
Andy Chalk said:
The terms of the settlement award all ownership rights of the Scrolls trademark to Bethesda parent ZeniMax, which has in turn licensed the use of the name to Mojang for its upcoming game and any related add-ons. It may not use the name in a sequel, however, or in any other future game.
Related add-ons, eh? I smell a loophole here. Just make a new game in the series and call it a stand-alone expansion pack. Like with DOW.

Everybody truly did win.
Apparently the document is quite thick, so I suspect the case you mention there has already been explicitly considered. Not necessarily against, but unlikely a loophole.
 

Suave Charlie

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Sep 23, 2009
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disgruntledgamer said:
K I'm going to trade mark the letter A, B, C, and D. So anyone that uses those letter will have to pay me or be sued. Why not it worked for the tools at Bethesda.
Why is it people who don't understand these things make the most obnoxious comments..
You go for it mate, it'll get thrown out harder than the "Edge" games debacle.
 

RandV80

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Oct 1, 2009
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Xanadu84 said:
I feel weird about this. Sure, Mojang is happy, and Bethesda is happy, but the ruleing just re enforces horrifying copyright laws. Bethesda now has been confirmed as having a copyright on a common English word. That is insane! Now be clear on this, Bethesda has always been acting as a rational, reasonable individual given the reality of the law as its written. I assign no blame to them. But the fact that the ruling here was not a paraphrase of, "Scrolls stays scrolls, no one can copyright a word, and Bethesda, dude, don't worry, you don't have act like a crazy paranoid person to protect your Ip. If someone ripped you off and they pointed to a Notches game as an example of not protecting your copyright, we will call them stupid right to their stupid faces" is clear proof that copyright laws are dumb.

In short, the villain here, and the villain all along, is the law being nonsense. Mojang and Bethesda have always been fine.
I agree here... I remember when the lawsuit first came up a more rational person on here pointed out that the actual trademark Mojang had filed was basically all encompassing, to the point that Zenimax had to sue or Mojang could sue them in the future for something like selling Elder Scrolls T-shirts, never mind the video game.

A win-win in this situation should be Mojang dropping the ridiculous trademark or narrowing it's scope, not simply handing it over to the even bigger team of lawyers. It may be fine settlement for the two parties involved but it's a lose-lose situation for everyone else.

Oh, except of course for the lawyers. I have a feeling that it was a lawyer who made the initial broad filing of the Scrolls trademark, which coincidentally is going to create a ton of future work for lawyers.
 

Hungry Donner

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Mar 19, 2009
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Strazdas said:
basically this. international copyright law is stupid.
Agreed. There are few lawsuits that involve so much legalese and so little common sense. Admittedly, intellectual property can be pretty nebulous, but the law is written in such a way that companies have to go to stupid lengths in order to protect themselves, or they potentially lose everything. If the stakes weren't so high and the requirements of "protecting" themselves so vague we'd have far fewer lawsuits like this.

I'm just glad it's over and both sides seem satisfied.
 

Gather

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Apr 9, 2009
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Magnicon said:
In this case it's a little different. They can use the words but not on their own. If you actually read the reasoning behind the lawsuit it was something like this:
If we let Scrolls pass this sets a terrible president of "like name" games. What if someone released the game "The Eldest Scrolls". It's just two words that happen to look like "Elder Scrolls"; why should Bethesda worry over it?

And if they did raise a copyright complaint over "The Eldest Scrolls" could argue they didn't raise a single flag at the trademark of "Scrolls" (Which could be considered to be the same issue) so why should they for this game?
 

SL33TBL1ND

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Nov 9, 2008
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Maze1125 said:
SL33TBL1ND said:
Andy Chalk said:
The terms of the settlement award all ownership rights of the Scrolls trademark to Bethesda parent ZeniMax, which has in turn licensed the use of the name to Mojang for its upcoming game and any related add-ons. It may not use the name in a sequel, however, or in any other future game.
Related add-ons, eh? I smell a loophole here. Just make a new game in the series and call it a stand-alone expansion pack. Like with DOW.

Everybody truly did win.
Apparently the document is quite thick, so I suspect the case you mention there has already been explicitly considered. Not necessarily against, but unlikely a loophole.
Dang. Well, I'm sure if it's possible they'll figure it out.
 

Atmos Duality

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Mar 3, 2010
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Given how convoluted any sort of "business laws" can become (copyright, trademark, licensing, etc), this is easily the best outcome you could have hoped for.
 

pAtRiCk_beNetAR

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Jan 13, 2012
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Gather said:
Magnicon said:
In this case it's a little different. They can use the words but not on their own. If you actually read the reasoning behind the lawsuit it was something like this:
If we let Scrolls pass this sets a terrible president of "like name" games. What if someone released the game "The Eldest Scrolls". It's just two words that happen to look like "Elder Scrolls"; why should Bethesda worry over it?

And if they did raise a copyright complaint over "The Eldest Scrolls" could argue they didn't raise a single flag at the trademark of "Scrolls" (Which could be considered to be the same issue) so why should they for this game?
Damn, I was too slow before you posted this.
I was going to suggest that in a perfect world, I would pay a team to create a game called The Eldest Scrolls or The Older Scrolls.
I would pay for an endless court battle against Zenimax with my inexhaustible resources, then pay for another endless battle counter-suing, win or lose.
I would make it some sort of F1 car racing game for my added amusement. Perhaps an elvish one.

I would do this after I had finished providing the funding for Wasteland 2 of course. (And Fallout online for that matter).
 

Logarithmic Limbo

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Mar 13, 2011
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FateOrFatality said:
Hopefully this doesn't bring up all the Bethesda hate...
Lawyers behaved like cunts, and by extension Zenimax are cunts, as well Bethesta. Just a huge fucking cuntfest. I hope they all die a fiery death.
 

disgruntledgamer

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Suave Charlie said:
disgruntledgamer said:
K I'm going to trade mark the letter A, B, C, and D. So anyone that uses those letter will have to pay me or be sued. Why not it worked for the tools at Bethesda.
Why is it people who don't understand these things make the most obnoxious comments..
You go for it mate, it'll get thrown out harder than the "Edge" games debacle.
Anyone else see the irony in this statement?

How is trademarking something like edge different than trademarking something like scrolls? FYI it's not it's equally retarded.
 

Aprilgold

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Apr 1, 2011
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FateOrFatality said:
Hopefully this doesn't bring up all the Bethesda hate again. Companies need to protect their trademarks - this isn't trivial, it isn't Bethesda being stupid. If they didn't take this seriously it could screw them over big time.

Glad to see the two could reach a compromise that protected the interests of both. Now can we have that Quake deathmatch?
As far as I know / knew, you couldn't trademark common words, like scrolls. I don't think anyone's going to confuse a card game for a Xbox 360 game any time soon.

Glad they got to a agreement though.