In an act of complete and utter stupidity, Bethesda has begun their “really silly” lawsuit against Mojang claiming that Scrolls’ name infringes on their popular sandbox single-player RPG series The Elder Scrolls.
In semi-related news, Thomas Biskup has sued an upcoming Roguelike for its game mechanics being similar to ADOM.
Via a legal document, a legal branch of Bethesda revealed that they were using comments on videos dedicated to Scrolls, and how the name Scrolls will be part of the Elder Scrolls series. Daniel Kaplan of Mojang said “They even took screenshots from our trailer and said we copied them… we have mountains in the Scrolls trailer, and they have that too in Skyrim, it is really silly believing our game will be confused with their FPS-RPG with realistic graphics. They have dumped everything they could find about Scrolls.”
In an unrelated titbit, Wizards of the Coast is suing SCEI over The Legend of Dragoon having magic (which D&D has), dungeons (which D&D has), and dragons (which D&D has).
The evidence they present will likely result in the entire case being laughed out of court and having Bethesda become a meme on the internet. I mean, citing YouTube as proof of confusion? You might as well cite redneck protestors as an accurate representation of the current state of the country.
Breaking: Greece has sued Nasu Kinoko over the appearence of Medusa, Hercules, and Medea in his visual novel Fate/Stay Night.
This isn’t going to fly very far, and if it does, then there will be a strong level of internet backlash against copyright law and patent abuse, further strengthening people’s opinions on how some patent methods are completely out of control, resulting in slippery slopes where nobody can design anything out of fear of being sued.
This just in: Bram Stoker rises from the dead to sue Konami into the ground for their use of Dracula Vlad Tepes as a main antagonist in the Castlevania series.
Rian Quenlin
“Breaking: Random dipstick sues Angry Birds because they patented a menu style!” was going to be among my snark but then I remembered that actually happened.
Chris Hernandez
I can’t believe game companies are so ridiculous in this matter. When it comes to movies you have multiple ones with the EXACT same name and may even have similar content but you don’t see them suing each other over it. I wonder why that is.
Andy Codina
Did Sony ever sue Microsoft for the Xbox 360? I mean, you know — the “X” “BOX” “360”. If they hadn’t called the latest Xbox “Slim” and called it Pyramid, or even bolder — TRIANGLE. We probably would have seen them suing their faces off.
Rian Quenlin
@Chris Quite a handful of those are remakes of something in the public domain, like I Am Legend which is based on an old book, and The Manchurian Candidate which was a movie a very long time ago.
@Andy Even if that was possible, those shapes are not even copyrightable unless you have them in a specific context, like how Sony uses all four.
Chris Hernandez
It’s more often that there are ripoffs trying to capitalize on a AAA movies success, Eg. ‘Battle of Los Angeles’ as apposed to the Blockbuster hit ‘Battle: Los Anegeles’. Which to me is a far greater travesty than simply using similar wording, yet they get away with it.