Minecraft developer Mojang is working on a new game called Scrolls. It was announced earlier this year and I can't say that I'm aware of anyone who confused its name with that of The Elder Scrolls series, though that hasn't stopped Bethesda -- or at least its lawyers -- from threatening Mojang and demanding that it stop using the Scrolls name.
In a blog post today, Mojang's Markus Persson recapped what's happened with the lawsuit and its trademarks. After trademarking Minecraft earlier this year, Mojang also filed for the name Scrolls. "We knew of no similarly named games, and we had even googled it to make sure," Persson says. "I'm not even sure if you CAN trademark individual words, like 'Scrolls,' but we sent in the application anyway."
Bethesda inquired about the Scrolls trademark at one point, believing it to be in conflict with its existing trademark for "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," Persson claims. "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."
A compromise was offered where no words would be placed in front of the word Scrolls, and expansions would take on the name of something such as Scrolls - The Banana Expansion.
This apparently wasn't good enough, as a Swedish law firm has sent a 15-page letter to Mojang demanding that the Scrolls name stop being used. It also stated it's prepared to sue -- and has even paid the necessary fee to pursue this course of action. The lawyers are also requesting money from Mojang before the case begins.
It's easy to draw a comparison between this and Tim Langdell, the former owner of a trademark on the word Edge who went litigation-crazy. He went so far as to invent people that submitted statements supporting him for use in court. As far as we know, Bethesda has yet to do anything that out there.
Now, it could be a matter of lawyers simply doing this on their own as something they automatically do. It's a possibility Persson acknowledges, saying, "I assume this is all some more or less automated response to us applying for the trademark." He did, however, add, "I sincerely hope Bethesda isn't pulling a Tim Langdell."
It would be a strange bit of timing for this to come out with QuakeCon currently going on. (Bethesda parent company ZeniMax Media owns id Software.) Kotaku ran into a Bethesda rep at the event who declined to comment, so as of yet, we don't know for sure if this is lawyers-being-lawyers or the actual wishes of Bethesda.
Should it turn out to be the latter, it wouldn't make Bethesda look particularly good. Mojang's collectible card/board game is drastically different than the Elder Scrolls RPGs, and, by and large, most people treat the latter as Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, and so on, rather than the latest iteration of The Elder Scrolls.
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