Posts tagged as Legal | Chaotic Tortoise

Tag: Legal

The Candy Banner Saga

January 27, 2014 by Ding·Comments Off

King, purveyors of the saccharine free-to-play money-generating pit that is Candy Crush Saga had a busy time in the headlines last week thanks to its legal shenanigans. The company has attempted to trademark the word Candy and has also tried to assert its ownership of the word Saga, which has put them at odds with indie developer Stoic, the studio behind Viking legend-themed RPG, The Banner Saga.

A typical shot of The Banner Saga. Beautiful art style and a ton of polish.

Back in 2011, I wrote something about a lawsuit between Bethesda Softworks and Mojang with the former claiming that the latter’s upcoming game “Scrolls” would confuse players into thinking it was somehow associated with its “The Elder Scrolls” series (more commonly known amongst gamers as Skyrim, Oblivion, and maybe the odd older title such as the far superior Morrowind). The King vs Stoic incident is similar, even down to the size of the companies involved.

Trademark Trolls: Scrolls and Bethesda v Mojang

August 8, 2011 by Ding·3 Comments

A Trademark Troll is a term applied to someone who makes money by relying on the revenue from legal action that they take against anyone creating something that they can link to one of their registered trademarks without really providing anything of any value. This can be a lucrative course of action with some people seeming to make whole careers out of this and is particularly rampant in the technology industry.

Most recently, Markus ‘Notch’ Pearson, creator of the runaway success Minecraft, has reported that his recently minted development studio, Mojang, has received a letter from the lawyers of Bethesda concerning a trademark infringement. Mojang’s in-development title “Scrolls“, according to Bethesda, is too similar to their long running RPG series, “The Elder Scrolls”, better known to gamers as Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion and the upcoming Skyrim which should be released in November.

The argument is that the name Scrolls could confuse gamers into thinking that it’s associated with Bethesda’s series. If successful, it would mean that Bethesda would essentially own the word scrolls. Based on legal precedent, it seems unlikely that they will succeed.