Bethesda and Tim Langdell | No High Scores

While the Bethesda/Mojang court case and the Tim Langdell EDGE nonsense have little in common, Bethesda needs to be careful here because the court of public opinion is starting to lean toward Bethesda being downright Langdellian in its pursuit of killing Mojang's Scrolls game.

(If you have no idea who Langdell is, grab a snack and read this RPS story. Langdell is forever linked to anything involving game trademarks and its abuse.)

Right or wrong, legal or not, people are starting to look at Bethesda (I suppose technically Zenimax) as being a bully.

Pete Hines, PR and marketing VP at Bethesda told Kotaku, "This is a business matter based on how trademark law works and it will continue to be dealt with by lawyers who understand it, not by me or our developers."

But then read trademark law expert Angela Bozzuti's comments....

"The standard is not whether the respective marks and relevant goods and services are identical, but whether consumers are likely to be confused. Here, the question is whether Mojang's use of the name for games is likely to cause consumers to wrongly think that 'Scrolls' is connected to Zenimax or its 'The Elder Scrolls' games."

If THAT'S the crux of the issue then you'd have to conclude that Zenimax is screwed, right? Is it remotely conceivable that gamers will confuse this:

http://scrolls.com/

with this:

http://www.elderscrolls.com/skyrim/

If you think that, you would be wrong, it seems. The Kotaku story writes, In other words, in the opinion of the foremost U.S. authority on trademarks, "Scrolls" is similar enough to "The Elder Scrolls" as to be confusing to consumers and therefore a potential infringement of Zenimax's trademark. Mojang's U.S. trademark application has therefore been rejected.

Confused yet?

Read the whole story on Kotaku here.

I have to ask, though: How do games like Call of Duty and Call of Juarez get made without court battles? Or God or War and Gears of War. Or Dungeons and Dungeons & Dragons.

Why is THIS case special?

"Mojang's public comments have not given a complete picture as it relates to their filings, our trademarks, or events that have taken place," said Hines.

Oh, well, that clears 'er right up. Truth is, and the Kotaku story points this out, most of these trademark law cases aren't always specifically about the current scuffle.

Zenimax literally has to fight Mojang in court over the title of the game "Scrolls" or they will be throwing away their decades-old "Elder Scrolls" trademark and unable to defend themselves in the future. According to Pete Hines, it's not a personal decision, or a situation that anyone at Bethesda and Zenimax really wants to be involved in, but from their point of view, they have no choice.

So if they don't fight this case, when a blatant rip off job comes down the road it will be more difficult for Bethesda to defend its trademark.

And that concludes Friday's Court Post of the Week.

Source: http://nohighscores.com/node/1665

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