Bethesda love suing people

Post by **King of Creation** » Sat Aug 06, 2011 9:46 am

[ Company -> Update ]

Seems Bethesda just loves to sue people. The newest victim of their litigiousness is Minecraft creator Notch. <a href="http://notch.tumblr.com/post/8519901309 ... ry">Here's his blog post</a> spelling it out:
<blockquote>
Bethesda are suing us, here's the full story!
A lot of people want more details about what is going on, so here is everything I know:
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.
About half a year ago, our lawyers recommended us to register “Minecraft” as a trademark, so we did. I had voted against it initially, but we did it anyway. Better safe than sorry, and all that. At the same time, we also applied for “Scrolls”, the new game we’re working on. We knew of no similarly named games, and we had even googled it to make sure. I’m not even sure if you CAN trademark individual words, like “Scrolls”, but we sent in the application anyway.
(Disclosure: We’ve enforced the trademark for Minecraft once, when there was a minecraft clone on iOS, using our name. People were emailing me saying our iOS version was buggy and bad, so we asked them to change the name of their game, and they did.)
A while later, out of the blue, we got contacted by Bethesda’s lawyers. They wanted to know more about the “Scrolls” trademark we were applying for, and claimed it conflicted with their existing trademark “The Elder Scrolls”. 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. We suggested a compromise where we’d agree to never put any words in front of “Scrolls”, and instead call sequels and other things something along the lines of “Scrolls - The Banana Expansion”. I’m not sure if they ever got back to us with a reply to this.
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.
I assume this is all some more or less automated response to us applying for the trademark. I sincerely hope Bethesda isn’t pulling a Tim Langdell.
</blockquote>
To parody this comedy further, via <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments ... it</a>:
<blockquote>
Bethesda now going after mouse manufacturers
 
<img title="Hosted by imgur.com" src="http://i.imgur.com/sB7Mb.jpg" alt="" />
</blockquote>

SenisterDenister · Post by **SenisterDenister** » Sat Aug 06, 2011 6:07 pm

Looks like they need some cash from getting their ass handed to them by Herve.

Stalagmite · Post by **Stalagmite** » Sat Aug 06, 2011 6:51 pm

It's easy to sit on your ass and summon a lawyer of screaming money-pockets just because you get a bad vibe from reading something.

Minecraft sucks Elder Scrolls sucks moving on.

rad resistance · Post by **rad resistance** » Sat Aug 06, 2011 7:33 pm

What the fuck is so amazing about Minecraft?

All I can formulate from this game is DIG DEEPER.

Yonmanc · Post by **Yonmanc** » Sun Aug 07, 2011 12:00 am

I'm concerned with the fact that Notch thinks Elder Scrolls is a "very good" series?

St. Toxic · Post by **St. Toxic** » Sun Aug 07, 2011 1:48 am

Why, are you two related?

Tofu Man · Post by **Tofu Man** » Sun Aug 07, 2011 4:02 am

rad resistance wrote:What the fuck is so amazing about Minecraft?

SenisterDenister · Post by **SenisterDenister** » Sun Aug 07, 2011 4:46 am

Its a fun time waster, its like a non-hardcore first person dwarf fortress kind of game.

A friend of mine runs a local server and whenever we are at his place we all LAN together and build a few forts and fight off monsters and stuff.

Stalagmite · Post by **Stalagmite** » Sun Aug 07, 2011 7:12 am

I would rather build forts out of my shit and claim it's hardcore.

Post by **Retlaw83** » Sun Aug 07, 2011 9:40 am

I don't know anything about Minecraft, but Stalagmite has proven his taste in games is questionable at best.

SenisterDenister · Post by **SenisterDenister** » Sun Aug 07, 2011 4:12 pm

I don't know where else to put this, so I'll put it here since its sort of Bethesda related.

I had a dream last night that I was back in highschool taking a math test, and I couldn't remember what a denominator was, and in my dream I started losing it, because I knew I was in college, and Bill Cosby (who was in there taking the test too for some odd reason) told me to calm down. I read over the paper again and saw the word "Skyrim" on the sheet. Suddenly the phrase "lowest common denominator" flooded into my memory and I knew what it was.

After the exam I put on T-51b armor, grabbed a turbo plasma rifle and sauntered off into the Appalachian mountains to fight the Xenomorph queen who respawns on a 356 day cycle to keep the used car business (housed over her underground domain) from going under because the people that own it are nice.

That was my dream. I don't quite know what means, I'm just putting it here before I forget.

Tofu Man · Post by **Tofu Man** » Mon Aug 08, 2011 4:47 am

Mining fun? The previous post?

I'll 'ave whatever he's havin'.

Stalagmite · Post by **Stalagmite** » Mon Aug 08, 2011 9:52 am

Retlaw83 wrote:I don't know anything about Minecraft, but Stalagmite has proven his taste in games is questionable at best.

Says the one playing Halo: Reach.

Post by **Retlaw83** » Tue Aug 09, 2011 2:21 am

It had a decent plot and was practically free. Haven't touched it in months, either, so your counter-argument doesn't hold water.