Bethesda vs Notch Going to Court

Recently, Bethesda Softworks (the gaming juggernaut behind such smash hits as The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, as well as the upcoming 5th entry in TES series: Skyrim) has filed suit against Markus “Notch” Persson (of Minecraft fame.) The suit was in regards  to Notch’s upcoming game entitled: Scrolls, as Bethesda alleges that this title infringes on their copyright for their game series: The Elder Scrolls. While not directly relevant, it is also interesting to note that Skyrim launches later this year on 11.11.11, as does the big anticipated patch/release of Minecraft.

There has, however, been one proposed solution to the dispute: Notch thinks they should settle it over a game of Quake III. There is an argument over something gaming related, so why not settle it over some games? Well, Bethesda was not a fan of this idea, and has now decided to actually take the matter to court. Notch had the following to say about the whole situation:

“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 wrote at the time. “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.”

Overall, I have definitely got to agree with Notch on this one. I don’t know if Todd Howard or anyone on the actual game development side of things has anything to do with this lawsuit, and I hope not, but I definitely think they are in the wrong. I mean, you don’t see Lucas Arts suing Geometry Wars for infringing on their copyright of “Star Wars” do you? Of course not, and those two things have more in common than TES and Scrolls. Hopefully this whole thing ends quickly, it seems a bit ridiculous. What do you think? Let us know in the comments!

Source: GameSpot