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Bethesda Tells Minecraft Creator: Cease and Desist
dotarray writes with news that Notch, creator of Minecraft, has received a letter from Zenimax, parent company of Bethesda, demanding that he rename his company's new game, which is called Scrolls. They claim it bears too strong a resemblance to The Elder Scrolls. Notch said:
"First of all, I love Bethesda. I assume this nonsense is partly just their lawyers being lawyers, and a result of trademark law being the way it is. ... I agree that the word 'Scrolls' is part of that trademark, but as a gamer, I have never ever considered that series of (very good) role playing games to be about scrolls in any way, nor was that ever the focal point of neither their marketing nor the public image. The implication that you could own the right to all individual words within a trademark is also a bit scary. We looked things up and realized they didn’t have much of a case, but we still took it seriously. Nothing about Scrolls is meant to in any way derive from or allude to their games."
normally copyright single common words?
If this is how Zenimax's legal representation justifies their retainers they should be fired.
" The implication that you could own the right to all individual words within a trademark is also a bit scary." I believe Apple owns every individual word in the trademark of their name.
more likely their lawyer(s) trying to justify their employment.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
once they act on the word "Arena" in relation to Zenimax-owned products Elder Scrolls: Arena and Quake III Arena...
... who has heard of 'The Elder Scrolls', seeing the game title 'Scrolls' did NOT make me think of the 'Elder Scrolls'.
Is this one of those scenarios where you'll only connect the 2 if you are a hardcore gamer? Isn't that kind of a requirement if it infringes? Must be obviously universally recognizable?
This is a trademark issue, not a copyright issue.
Despite all falling under the banner "intellectual property", Trademarks, Copyright, Patents, Designs Rights etc are all completely different types of monopoly and shouldn't be conflated (which is why "intellectual property" is, quite frankly, a useless term).
Coca Cola should send a letter to Pepsi Cola.
Interesting, I guess Valusoft should be suing Bethesda regarding Prey 2, since apparently in 2001, they released a game called "Primal Prey". ... I really had to search for that one.
I'm copyrighting the work 'the'. I suspect by the end of the year, I'll have successfully owned 95% of the planet.
Bethesda just made my list of evil companies. Right up there with Oracle, Microsoft and Electronic Arts. I guess I'll just have to seed some scrolls to keep the karmic balance.
My first thought when people mention scrolls is Prince of Persia. Don't know why.
Seriously, you can't even use PART of a trademark now? "The Elder Scrolls" is quite different from "Scrolls."
That would be like saying you can't call a game "Blade" or "Mount" because of "Mount & Blade," or have a game called "Magic" because of "Might & Magic" ... or ...
Maybe this is just because they have to be proactive about keeping their trademark or something. I don't know. Stupid. :)
Elder Scrolls is just later in the series:
Scrolls The Early Years.
Scrolls.
Elder Scrolls.
Let's see, we can't use "Age" or "Edge", and now "Scrolls" is out as well.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Destroy Bethesda one of the last decent game producers. I mean hell, do they got stocks I can short?
WTF WTF all the way around. Pour a whiskey for me and a whiskey for you and bottoms up.
Why nobody is seriously using those old scrolls +Fravia had in the phplab.
http://fravia.2113.ch/phplab/scroll.htm Who needs f-ing google+
are Magnetic Scrolls: The Pawn, The Guild of Thieves, Jinxter, Corruption, Fish, Myth, Wonderland... loved these in the 80s/early 90s and still do. A 5,25" floppy disk, wrapped around a rolling pin, that's my earliest encounter with scrolls in video games.
....meanwhile, i have yet to see Notch get his panties in a bunch about Total Miner, the C- Minecraft knockoff coming to Xbocks Live in the near future. Yes I know the history of Minecraft, and I know that Notch borrowed a lot from Infiniminer. But this also goes to show that game 'concepts' aren't sacred.
I can see if Notch named his new game "Alder Scrolls" or "Newer Scrolls" or "Minerfall: The Buggiest Scrolls Evar" or "Iron Scroll: Mining The Oblivion" or anything else that would directly allude to another game. I don't know about Scrolls, but it sounds as if it isn't anything like any of the Elder Scrolls games. Games which btw aren't really about scrolls in particular.
Hmm...
do() || do_not();
Zenimax is probably becoming a trademark/copyright bully. They had the JavaScript Doom port DMCA'd a few months ago, even though it was based on the original GPL source release and using the shareware IWAD (distributed by id Software themselves on their FTP site). I hope that Bethesda and id Software raise hell over this stuff and that it stops, because this is really damaging the reputation of some of the best game developers in the business. Imagine all the people who won't buy games from Zenimax subsidiaries if this keeps up....
...in trademarking "Scrolls".
Then could he (in theory) go to Bethesda and arm wrestle them for using HIS newly granted trademark?
"Hey, I notice you have the title The Elder Scrolls... since I own Scrolls, I demand you cease and desist".
Not saying Notch would do that - he's a normal/reasonable guy. But Bethesda's action might be the legally correct action in order to protect themselves from Notch's attempt to own a broad word.
You have a list of evil software companies that doesn't include Adobe or Symantec?
I like how the odd part is not making a list of evil software companies, but making the wrong one. =)
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Technology companies are pretty good about properly integrating their marketing and public relations efforts into the business proper. So if they need to do a safety recall the PR people are involved in the process; a decent PR guy can turn "the XYZ-5000 sprays customers with burning acid" recall into "XYZ really cares about its customers, and as a lovely fluffy precaution we're fixing all our XYZ-5000s, even though most of them are perfectly super and don't experience moderate thermal variances". Engineering, QA, customer relations, finance - every department doesn't get to communicate with the public (or do anything that's obviously going to end up being public) without someone in PR there to make sure the message is put out right.
Legal departments, by dint of (often broken) corporate org-trees are a notable exception to this. When they see a problem, they fix it the lawyer way, and the rest of the company never knows until after the fact. In olden times of yore stuff like this was trivia between one legal office and another, and only the most nebbish of corporate historian ever know why a product changed its name or wasn't orange coloured any more. So the lawyers behaved as they always did, striking as quickly and as hard as they could, writing letters as outlandishly vitriolic and court pleadings as wildly exaggerated as they felt they could get away with, knowing that things would stay on the downlow and whatever happened only the outcome would matter to anyone.
They didn't consider that, if you sent someone a demand letter, the first thing they'd do is tweet about it to their entire customer base (which turns out to be a big proportion of your customer base too), and post the letter (with all its wild and crazy claims) on the internet, for everyone to point and laugh at. If it's the all-too-common shot across the bows (rather than a serious attempt) you risk looking like a rather unhinged bully.
Like it or not (and the lawyers don't like it, and decorate their broadsides with all kinds of "if you publish this letter we'll sue to for that too" stuff) everything anyone in the corporation does reflects on the whole outfit. The PR folks should be in on the ground floor with anything like this. They don't get to veto every lawsuit or every letter, but they can put a choke-hold on the stupid. Right now Zenimax's PR guy has his head in his hands; I'll bet the first thing he knew about the whole affair was when he read it online, and he'll spend next week fighting fires and soothing angry faces. Notch probably won't change the name, but if he does that's just another news cycle of bad PR for Zenimax.
## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
The first place I'd heard about Skyrim and how cool it's going to be was from Notch himself, months ago.
lawyers can go eat a poop sandwich.
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
Uh-oh
http://scrolls.blogspot.com/
God has a plan for the fucking scrolls.
By the way those old phplab scrolls felt like Copernic did, then the original copernic disappeared. Coincidence?
The first rule of having a trademark is "don't lose your trademark." This is done by defending it against every potential threat, no matter how tenuous the connection.
Essentially, if you don't defend yourself, then your trademark is automatically weakened.
For example, if your trademark is for a video game called "Elder Scrolls," and you allow a game called "Scrolls," to be published unchecked, then you've effectively stated that the word "Scrolls," and titles including that word, are all acceptable, and cannot be challenged by trademark.
In the end, Zenimax either maintains their current position by forcing Notch to back down, or their trademark is more clearly defined, including restrictions on what Notch can call this and its sequels (if any).
Thus the only losing move is not to play.
Every now and then we see lawyers for a company do silly things like this. Lawyers live in their own world, nearly wholly disconnected from ours. In their world, they send lots of letters on anything that even remotely might kind of sorta maybe be in the same ballpark as their trademark.
In the real world, marketing sees the reaction to that. When it makes news (like this case), marketing goes to the CEO and says "hey legal is causing us grief." The CEO then tells legal to play nice in this case. Particularly since if they actually tried to challenge this in court they'd get laughed at.
So, publicity will solve this one.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
It should also be pointed out that the several trademark registries allowed Mojang to register Scrolls months ago. Including US and Sweden (registering it as an EU trademark).
the same lawyers recommended their name be Bethesda.
I'm with Notch on the idea that Elder Scrolls really doesn't have a lot of scroll-based IP in it nor the right to own single words, but more importantly:
Of all the company names Notch could pick to epitomize what he and Minecraft are about, why "Scrolls"? That doesn't add any brand value. Honestly, he himself has ten times the brand recognition of any company name he could make. He could make his company "NotchCo" or "Notch's Minecraft Company" and get 100x the name recognition.
"Scrolls Studios, LLC? The hell is that?"
"It's the company Notch founded, that made Minecraft."
"Oh! Why didn't you just SAY so?"
First, someone inform these tools that gamers aren't so retarded to not know the difference. We are computer gamers, not console gamers, we aren't playing Pogs, we aren't completely retarded. Secondly, the Minecraft guy is small potatoes, he's the little guy, the underdog, and busting his balls is a great publicity stunt to paint yourself as being a complete dick. I don't like buying games from people who act like dicks. Why? Because being a dick is a habit, and how long does it take for them to be dicks with me if I do business with them.
Besides, how come some game company with a half ounce of brains hasn't snapped this guy up and put him on their dev team?
Now for something completely different; Minecraft PvP to me is awesome. It's as polished as that last turd I dropped off, but the concept/game play of it has potential to be incredibly brutal and nerve wracking. The brutality of it reminds me of Darktide, but only crueler somehow if that is possible. It's not for pussies. It needs the polish of a slick FPS and the rich character development of a RPG, make it MMO, and PVP and you would make orgasmic money. Multiple orgasmic money. You know I am right.
Take the Red Pill.
Just change the name.
It's not like Notch is losing anything, the "Scrolls" name has next to no brand recognition for him and is a little close to "Elder Scrolls".
Why blow this up into a full blown confrontation?
Bethesda is the name of a hospital that's been around at least 20 years. Maybe they should have their lawyers take a look at Bethesda Softworks. hehe
I am putting any company that is letting itself run by lawyers instead of customer-oriented executives into that list. and bethesda just made that list. i am bored lately, and i was toying with the idea of playing an old school rpg franchise i havent played yet. and actually i stood over elder scrolls for some time in gamersgate. now i know which i wont be buying - elder scrolls.
i have no tolerance for lawyery gimmicks and cutthroat capitalism in gaming. anyone who curbs my future potential fun - which unfortunately is quite lacking in our times - is my mortal enemy. and threatening/scaring other companies into anyhing, even if its about names, does that.
bye bye bethesda. you had quite a few good games.
Read radical news here
I did a quick Google search and found several game titles with 'Scroll'. Several pre-dating the 1994 release of the first Elder Scrolls.
I suspect Bethesda will have troubles winning this one, but courts can be funny sometimes.
Bethesda is bad and you are bad for liking them. You should probably just uninstall life.
Look at the minecraft fanboys come out of the woodwork on this article.
Come on fanboys. be honest. yeah its a shitty lawyer type thing to do. but elder scrolls and scrolls IS a little too close when they are both in the games industry.
If you want to argue over what's stupid or evil.. Target the worlds trademark system on this one. Not the lawyers who are doing what they're supposed to be doing when the trademarks are a little too close and overlap in the same industry. You can't blame ppl for doing their job within a shitty system the rest of us defined. ie. hate the game. not the players.
As much as i HATE to defend lawyers... They are in the right on this one and will most likely win.
(still think we should try killing all the lawyers, it's a novel solution that we have not tried yet. Heck. it might just fix the planet. Won't know until we try once tho... )
to The Younger Scrolls
...
"Today, I got a 15 page letter from some Swedish lawyer firm, saying they demand us to stop using the name Scrolls, that they will sue us (and have already paid the fee to the Swedish court), and that they demand a pile of money up front before the legal process has even started."
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't it a standard not-technically-a scam in the EU / UK for legal departments to file on behalf of customers they don't actually represent, requesting legal fees and the like? Something to do with how the courts (particularly the trademark system) works over there? I seem to remember many, many, MANY moons ago a discussion on Slashdot about some legal firm in Germany doing something similar.
I would have guessed that it would have been Blizzard going after him for using a word + "Craft"
Notch says "The implication that you could own the right to all individual words within a trademark is also a bit scary." Well Notch could be a little more creative than using a single dictionary word to name his game. I hope he isn't planning to assert any trademark on the word "Scrolls".
So, I can found a company called Apple Sails that manufactures sailboats, but if I also build digital depth finding equipment, I can't call it Apple Trolls (q.v.)? I'm beginning to think you shouldn't be able to trademark any single word that appears in a standard dictionary. Generally, the trademark system would appear to be iLLOGICAL and iDIOTIC. Not to mention iNSANE.
I'm going to have to rename my geriatric-oriented action adventure JRPG "Elder". I don't want to get sued!