New Comic Friday August 19th

Franko

BlankZoe

I thought it was ZeniMax that didn't want him to do that, not Bethesda?

Franko

fight it out, bitch
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2391383,00.asp

Raneados

Blankzilla wrote:

I thought it was ZeniMax that didn't want him to do that, not Bethesda?

Notch wrote:

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.

kedinik

Scrolls from hell to breakfast, excellent.

Monkey Ball Warrior

Sounds like Tycho needs to buy some tomes to store all his scrolls.

Fandeathis

What a ridiculous lawsuit.

RMS Oceanic

One should not have a monopoly on a word found in the dictionary.

Fyndir

Oceanic, as a representative of Hasbro I have to inform you that your post infringes on our trademark.

RMS Oceanic

What trademark specifically, Mister Hasbro?

Fyndir

Monopoly™

RMS Oceanic

But I trademarked "representative".

I didn't really, but content in spoiler tags is not admissible in court because I said so.

Fyndir

RMS Oceanic wrote:

But I trademarked "representative".

I'll have to consult with the legal department, suffice to say MIGHTY HASBRO is unhappy with you.

BusterK

Monopoly is owned by Parker Bros

RMS Oceanic

Fyndir wrote:

RMS Oceanic wrote:

But I trademarked "representative".

I'll have to consult with the legal department, suffice to say MIGHTY HASBRO is unhappy with you.

The owners of Mighty Mouse™ may not approve of your appropriation of the word Mighty.

Opty

BusterK wrote:

Monopoly is owned by Parker Bros

Parker Bros is owned by Hasbro

faits

Opty wrote:

BusterK wrote:

Monopoly is owned by Parker Bros

Parker Bros is owned by Hasbro

and hasbro is owned by zenimax

ok it's not but whatever

Hewn

We're just one more connection from Kevin Bacon!

Butler

It seems that some trademark lawyers have the temperaments of bored dogs, barking furiously at anything that comes near even if it's the lady next door pruning her roses.

ronzo

Butler wrote:

It seems that some trademark lawyers have the temperaments of bored dogs, barking furiously at anything that comes near even if it's the lady next door pruning her roses.

Wikipedia wrote:

Unlike copyright law which provides for criminal penalties as well as civil damages, trademark law in the United States is almost entirely enforced through private lawsuits. The exception is in the case of criminal counterfeiting of goods. Otherwise, the responsibility is entirely on the mark owner to file suit in either state or federal civil court in order to restrict an infringing use. Failure to "police" a mark by stopping infringing uses can result in the loss of protection.

they have to try to defend it, as dumb as it sounds. Something similar happened last year with Ford and Ferrari when the latter wanted to name a car the F150.

Anzekay

ronzo wrote:

Butler wrote:

It seems that some trademark lawyers have the temperaments of bored dogs, barking furiously at anything that comes near even if it's the lady next door pruning her roses.

Wikipedia wrote:

Unlike copyright law which provides for criminal penalties as well as civil damages, trademark law in the United States is almost entirely enforced through private lawsuits. The exception is in the case of criminal counterfeiting of goods. Otherwise, the responsibility is entirely on the mark owner to file suit in either state or federal civil court in order to restrict an infringing use. Failure to "police" a mark by stopping infringing uses can result in the loss of protection.

they have to try to defend it, as dumb as it sounds. Something similar happened last year with Ford and Ferrari when the latter wanted to name a car the F150.

By challenging a company over a use of a single word? Sure, I understand why they do it and how they actually can even begin to think they can.

But seriously?

Hunter

Oh lawyers, is there anything you can't ruin

Maigaard

There exists a game called Edge. I'm having a hard time imagining that there exists no other game with "edge" in the title. This is a dumb lawsuit.

EDIT: Edge is a very new game, and neither Mirror's Edge, Cross Edge, Baja: Edge of Control, or Motorstorm: Arctic Edge, seems to have taken a swing at the title.

ronzo

Anzekay wrote:

ronzo wrote:

Butler wrote:

It seems that some trademark lawyers have the temperaments of bored dogs, barking furiously at anything that comes near even if it's the lady next door pruning her roses.

Wikipedia wrote:

Unlike copyright law which provides for criminal penalties as well as civil damages, trademark law in the United States is almost entirely enforced through private lawsuits. The exception is in the case of criminal counterfeiting of goods. Otherwise, the responsibility is entirely on the mark owner to file suit in either state or federal civil court in order to restrict an infringing use. Failure to "police" a mark by stopping infringing uses can result in the loss of protection.

they have to try to defend it, as dumb as it sounds. Something similar happened last year with Ford and Ferrari when the latter wanted to name a car the F150.

By challenging a company over a use of a single word? Sure, I understand why they do it and how they actually can even begin to think they can.

But seriously?

The alternative is someone actually ripping them off and then pointing to the time where they didn't do anything to a similar infraction.

I seriously doubt this will actually go anywhere but due to the retarded nature of trademarking here in America they may have felt they had to

faits

Maigaard wrote:

There exists a game called Edge. I'm having a hard time imagining that there exists no other game with "edge" in the title. This is a dumb lawsuit.

EDIT: Edge is a very new game, and neither Mirror's Edge, Cross Edge, Baja: Edge of Control, or Motorstorm: Arctic Edge, seems to have taken a swing at the title.

no but tim langdell sure did

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_(video_game)#Trademark_dispute

darleysam

Maigaard wrote:

There exists a game called Edge. I'm having a hard time imagining that there exists no other game with "edge" in the title. This is a dumb lawsuit.

EDIT: Edge is a very new game, and neither Mirror's Edge, Cross Edge, Baja: Edge of Control, or Motorstorm: Arctic Edge, seems to have taken a swing at the title.

Of all the games to pick.. are you being serious here?

Kyoka Suigetsu

Birthday comic!

kingworks

I'm trademarking 'The.'

Take that, bee-yotch.

Hunter

I'm trademarking "T".

See you in court.

Seriously

"Ancient Writings"

kingworks

Hunter wrote:

I'm trademarking "T".

See you in court.

Clever girl.

Except I already trademarked the concept of writing. Thus the tables were turned twice!

faits

sorry dude I trademarked tables and the turning thereof

faits

everyone turning tables in this thread owed me a dollar

darleysam

faits wrote:

everyone turning tables in this thread owed me a dollar

I got a similar trademark on tricks. Notify your mother.

faits

what a coincidence because

I trademarked your mother last night

Junpei

Damn you faits!

(┛◉Д◉)┛彡┻━┻

darleysam

faits wrote:

what a coincidence because

I trademarked your mother last night

Tried pantenting yours, but the 'prior use' list was extensive.

Druhim

Hunter wrote: »

Oh lawyers, is there anything you can't ruin

Don't forget that almost 60% of congress has practiced law..

Langly

(┛◉Д◉)┛彡┻━┻

this is seriously one of my favorite things, every time it gets used I laugh.

kingworks

I have clearly waded beyond by depth.

Nothing but sharks out here.

Lucascraft

I read about this a couple days ago on Kotaku. The whole thing is absurd, but I understand that the laywers might feel like they need to at least make an attempt, even if it doesn't go anywhere.

But seriously, how could anyone be so dense as to think you can own the rights to a single word. I could understand Bethesda/Zenimax being upset if the name of the game was perhaps "The Young Scrolls" or something like that. But just plain "Scrolls" doesn't really conjure any connection in my mind with the Elder Scrolls series. Especially since a good majority of the fans don't even know that Elder Scrolls is the name of the series or a part of the title.

Being a Gamestop employee, I have people come into my store all the time asking for help finding Oblivion. I'm always like "Its in the E's for Elder Scrolls" its like they don't even realize there's more to the title. People will approach me and say "I would like to reserve the new Oblivion please." They don't ask to reserve the new Elder Scrolls. Its the new Oblivion. I just want to slap them and say, "Hey dumbass, this isn't Oblivion 2. Its Elder Scrolls 5. There have been other Elder Scrolls games before Oblivion, but you are a tool who knows nothing of the lineage of this game and only played Oblivion because your brosef lifemates told you it was a sweet game."