Mojang being sued by Zenimax Media

Has he been taking infants from their mothers, cracking their skulls open and devouring their gray matter?

Only on Sundays.

Okey, "Hate" Is a strong word, I say than "Dislike" fits it better.

Basically, I dont like how he cant seem to make his own game better. The game has the potential to freaking be the starter of what could be a whole new fucking genere (If it isnt already), yet he just dosnt seems to be concerned about it...

I understand he is an indie depolover and all, but seriously... cmon, you have some damm potential right there.

But apparently he is realizing this as of lately so there are some hopes left.

I tried my best to behave well (I did it MUCH better than back when I was at Minecraft forums, thats for sure), so yeah. Besides this has nothing to do with the whole topic...

Just thought I'd note that Zenimax Media, while not actually Bethesda, was created by the founders of Bethesda and is in essence the "big angry corporation" end of their conglomerate.

Regarding this, I wouldn't be shocked if, on some level, they HAVE to make a play about this to protect their trademarks. Even if they're not serious about crushing it. Think back to when Marvel sued Cryptic over City of Heroes, then gave them a dumptruck full of money to try and make MUO.

It's not just protecting their trademark. A workable compromise was suggested and dismissed.

I would totally buy a game named "The Banana Expansion".

Also, bad ZeniMax. No cookie until you apologize.

On the bright side, it's thanks to this lawsuit that I even knew about this game...and now I'm interested and might pick it up if it turns out to be good.

Also, I'm totally going to call Arena, Daggerfall etc as the Scrolls games from now on.

BANANA EXPANSION? lol.

I've got an expanding banana...

Cool story, bro.

Did you just seriously make that joke?

I just wanted to make a quick note here that it is trademark and not copyright that is at issue here. Both are intellectual property, but they are different systems. I noticed that several people in this thread have been making this mistake.

An update! Apparently Notch has thrown the gauntlet at Bethesda saying he wants to settle this with a Quake 3 Team Deathmatch.

...

As much as I dislike Notch... he is crazy, no doubt about it, and not in a bad way either! And I hope he wins the game.

Well, if bethesta (wasnt it Zenimax Media anyway?) Accepts, obviously. But I dont think they do...

Even then, I hope to see all the reactions, LOL.

edited 17th Aug '11 10:54:22 AM by NONAMEGIVEN

That's adorable, but this needs to go to court and get properly thrown out, hard. We can't have even passive encouragement of a legal system that disallows the use of any word that's been in a popular title for any future titles, it's insane on its face (regardless of whether you're limiting it to a list of 'sufficiently obscure' words or not).

Zenimax owns id Software.

^Technically, they own it nowadays.

Crazy Awesome as that is, I'd much rather see this get settled in court so that Bethesda learns that trying to shove your dick in somebody else's face gets you nowhere. The whole case is just ridiculous, as has been said.

Yeah, this is best settled through legal channels, but I still wanna see the Quake III match.

inb4 Zenimax loses and sues Mojang for "using aimbots".

Eh, it should be easy to have a moderated gamign session - you can't use your own machine. Not even your own mouse.

Just in case anybody else stumbles upon this thread and starts getting any big ideas about jumping on the "Poor Majang!" bandwagon, I'll leave this post here:

(Copy/pasted from a post Amazon that clarifies this wonderfully)

• "Patrick Berg says:

• sigh* Here we go again. Another news story about the "Bethesda vs Mojang" trademark dispute, and suddenly people get all worked up with "Anti-Bethesda" hysteria and canceling preorders without even bothering to research trademark law or, heaven forbid, the actual trademarks related to this dispute. And once more, people seem to be blindly latching on to the concept that Notch and crew are somehow victims in this whole mess. Now before I go any further, how about we go over some facts about trademark law?

First of all, the way trademark law works is once you register a trademark, you have to defend it against any and all threats or risk losing it (and this has been mentioned several times now). This doesn't mean that one company gets to use that trademark exclusively though. Different companies can hold the same trademark (well, the same trademarked word at least) for different products. For example, you're probably familiar with Id Software's trademark on "Rage", but this trademark can co-exist with other "Rage" trademarks like the "Rage" trademark on motor-scooters and another "Rage" trademark on pesticides (fun fact: there's over 30 different trademarks on the word "Rage"). You see trademark disputes when a company owns a trademark and another company tries to register a similar trademark for the same product type (in this case it's computer games). That by itself isn't necessarily enough to pursue trademark infringement (unless you're Tim Langdell), you also have to establish a case for similarity. With "The Elder Scrolls" and "Scrolls" the similarities should be apparent to anyone who has actually looked up the two games. They're both fantasy themed and they both appear to have RPG-like elements to them. That right there is enough to establish trademark infringement for most legal courts, so Bethesda does have a fairly decent case. And again, as stated at the start of this paragraph, if Bethesda didn't take any legal action to this threat to their trademark, it could cause them to lose "The Elder Scrolls" later on.

• Please note that when I say that "Scrolls" and "The Elder Scrolls" have notable similarities, I'm talking about the kind of similarities that will determine the outcome of the case in court. Obviously "Scrolls" and "The Elder Scrolls" are two very different games and have few actual gameplay similarities. As gamers, we all know that, but we're talking about trademark similarities with a court of law, not a court of gamers. Tim Langdell got away with his whole "Edge" trademark trolling with far less, he didn't even have an argument for similarities other than they were games.*

Furthermore, it's important to consider that trademark disputes are not rare, in fact, they're fairly common. Although it must be admitted that most trademark disputes are not revealed to the public (or gather much media attention), much less announced on Twitter. Besides the Tim Langdell cases and this one, how many trademark disputes has anyone actually heard about? Not many, I'd gather. What is rather unique about this case is that it's actually going to court, as usually the two parties in a trademark dispute settle matters outside of the courtroom.

And, if you're still having doubts about the legitimacy of Bethesda's case, here's a quote from a legal expert interviewed by Wired.com last month.

" Attorney and game industry analyst Mark Methenitis told Wired.com that the publisher was just doing what any prudent trademark holder would normally do.

"The basic question here is whether the two trademarks are likely to be confused," Methenitis said in an e-mail. "There's a pretty well-established test for this under U.S. trademark law, and based on those factors, Bethesda has a reasonable argument." "

Source: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/08/minecraft-bethesda-lawsuit/

Finally, before you jump to take Notch's side in this issue, you should know the specifics of his "Scrolls" trademark. I took the liberty of looking it up on the Electronic Trademark Database and it's pretty surprising. It's not just a trademark on computer-games. Notch's trademark for the word "Scrolls" includes clothing (of all types, including t-shirts), hardware platforms, boardgames, toys, hand-helds, and traditional card games. This means that Bethesda's case against Mojang may not be the last court battle Notch will have to face over this, as his trademark clearly violates the trademarks of other companies (such as the Scrolls Clothing Company, which owns the trademark of "Scrolls" for t-shirts). The sheer broadness of Notch's "Scrolls" trademark is rather astounding, as most companies specify one thing for a trademark and make additional trademark registrations for additional products (for example, Bethesda has 6 separate trademarks on "The Elder Scrolls", covering everything from clothing to their forums, but each trademark covers only one thing). I imagine this is usually done in order to avoid large-scale trademark infringements.

Furthermore, just because you make a game doesn't mean you have to register a trademark for it! The vast majority of indie games DO NOT have trademarks! It's not a legal requirement in the slightest, and Notch could keep the name of his game as "Scrolls" if he dropped the trademark. Heck, I imagine there wouldn't be much of a legal issue if he had trademarked a full title like "Scrolls: The Card Game" or anything a little more complicated than just "Scrolls".

If you're interested in doing a bit of research on this subject, I encourage you to look up the trademarks that are involved. You can find Notch's trademark (and pretty much every other trademark ever registered) at this website: http://tess2.uspto.gov/

This is mostly a re-post of another reply I made in these Skyrim forums, but since people are still avoiding the facts, I feel this re-post is justified."*

edited 5th Oct '11 10:02:52 PM by DisasterGrind

The fact that people have canceled pre-orders means that Bethesda has kinda shot themselves in the foot, however unintentionally.

From that article:

Fair point, but both are still yet to be released, so more obvious dissimilarities could emerge as time goes on. And even then, those sound a bit tenuous in terms of relation.

Bethesda may be in the right, but public opinion will swing in favor of Mojang, and that's where Bethesda will get bitten hard.

edited 5th Oct '11 10:10:11 PM by RocketDude

Not me. I know Bethesda and I like them. This Mojang, I don't know them so fuck them. I'll stick by Bethesda.

This. Also, as has been stated many times in this thread, it's not even Bethesda's fault, it's the Zenimax lawyers. So blaming Bethesda is illogical.