Hey, Bethesda Let’s settle this | Hacker News Reader

Hey, Bethesda Let’s settle this

notch.tumblr.com

309 pointsShenglong97 comments

This is not without precedent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_airlines#.22Just_Plan...

Southwest Airlines was sued by Stevens Aviation over their use of the phrase "Just Plane Smart" in their advertisements. Herb Kelleher, CEO of Southwest, offered to settle the dispute by arm-wrestling the CEO of Stevens. He lost the match, but got rights to the phrase anyways, and both companies got a lot of good publicity out of the match.

You get a plus for that one. I always like when people provide evidence to back stuff up.

To me though, how can someone trademark or copyright a single established word in any language, it just seems ridiculous really.

PS: I hope Bethesda takes him up on the offer.

I think Microsoft owns the trademark for the word "Windows".

http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/en/us/IntellectualPrope...

For a long time they didn't own the trademark for Excel, having to call it "Microsoft Excel" in all official communication.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel#Excel_2.0

Heh, trademarking a single established word is not even where it stops. T-Mobile owns the color magenta! [1]. So don't just stop at words. Let's do letters, colors, etc. And of course as soon as you trademark a color, it implies that you've trademarked all the individual colors that make it up. Thus a trademark on the color white (#FFFFFF (c) (tm) Igor Partola, all rights reserved) would give you all other colors.

[1] http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/color-the-next-limited-re...

EDIT: Fixed silly color theory mistake.

EDIT2: s/copyright/trademark/g

Black is the absence of colour. White is composed of all other colours.

Only in additive color mixing. In subtractive mixing, it's the opposite.

Oh FFS, did you even spend a second figuring out what a trademark on a color actually means?

I honestly don't know what you mean. I have almost no interest in copyright law as it is. All I know is that I believe that if I make a magenta cell phone and start selling it, T-Mobile might get upset. Please explain what you mean.

It's a trademark, not a copyright. Trademarks are intended to protect consumers, not companies. Legally, it's only infringement if consumers might be confused. So I can say the word Facebook here, and as long as it's obvious that I'm not claiming to be Facebook, or diluting the brand, it's OK.

Well, at least you're honest in your ignorance.

Trademarks and copyrights are two totally different things. See here: http://www.lawmart.com/searches/difference.htm

tl;dr: Trademarks are more to do with logos and branding, their intent being to allow a company to distinguish themselves in a market with a certain identity. Violations of Trademarks are usually linked to consumers being mislead into believing a product is from one company when it is in fact from another.

T-Mobile does not own a copyright for Magenta. They don't own Magenta. If I want to make Magenta chairs they have no say. They would never receive a Trademark on black, however.

If you start making magenta phones, it's reasonable to assume that the average consumer would confuse them with the already popular magenta phones being promoted by T-Mobile, and this might damage their brand, given that your phones might not work to the same standard.

It's generally not good to form an opinion of topics before you actually obtain a relevant amount of education. It can lead you to making yourself look really stupid.

You would probably fair better doing some research for yourself.

Here is wikipedia's entry on the first U.S. lawsuit that established that color could be trademarked: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualitex_Co._v._Jacobson_Produc....

It’s important to point out the colour trademarks are applicable only within their chosen markets. Orange in the UK (mobile phone network) have a shade of orange that they claim as a trademark. EasyGroup (a company in a rather diverse set of industries) use a very similar shade of orange, but that wasn’t a problem until they tried to enter the mobile market as a virtual network:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EasyGroup#EasyMobile.2FShimmerB...

How do you feel about "Apple"?

The computer company or the record label?

Well that's the point, right? If I make a computer called "Apple", that's confusing for people buying computers. If I release records under "Apple", that's confusing for people buying records (although you could make the case that people don't care). Otherwise, I'm free to use it.

Trademarks don't mean "word monopoly".

Depends on if it's a green one or a red one. (haha jk)

But really, the same way I feel about Scrolls. Even considering the larger company size, and the higher revenue, and the longer life of the company. The only difference being Bethesda is going the extra mile and trying to monopolize a single word that is included within a group of words. The Elder Scrolls:(Insert subtitle here), while Apple is and always has been Apple. If I make a game or company called, Green Apple or Apple Smasher and Apple tries to sue me, I'm going to be using the same argument.

Yeah, I'm not gonna try to defend that a game called "Scrolls" is going to confuse anyone, that's total BS. Just saying that the idea of a trademark applying to an English word isn't, like, completely out of the question.

Some video of the event - it's just as funny as it sounds. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwU9m4oCtRE

Something else not without precedent is companies duking it out in virtual competition.

http://afterhoursgaming.tv/about/

Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Zynga, Twitter, and Dropbox compete in a Starcraft II tournament. If you're curious, it has reached the semi-finals stage, and Microsoft is the only one who has not lost any matches.

There were a few precedents from the 1980s and 1990s where Japanese firms in a few industries settled commercial disputes in the $ZOMG region via rock-paper-scissors. This nearly caused an aneurysm or three in my Japanese economy class, but the prof explained "It's fair, cheap compared to litigation, and even if you lose your CEO is not going to want to stab an icepick into the eye of someone who he is almost certainly going to have to do business again with."

I'm mostly telling this for the "funny anecdote" angle, since without a social connection (either direct person-to-person or inferred by being a member of the same fraternity of elite megacorps), the likelihood of a Japanese firm agreeing to this method of dispute resolution with a firm of Notchs' size is zero.

If only all legal battles could be solved with an old-fashion duel. Even better, lets make the lawyers fight to the death. Solves both the legal side and serves as a nice control of the lawyer population...

More seriously, I really hope that the legal system can start setting a practical standard for intelectual property debates. From patents to trademarks or even how we handle trade secrets, it's like the information age has created a new cold-war era in business mentality and it serves no purpose other than to abuse power.

After listening to TAL's "When Patents Attack" episode in the car this morning, I'm inclined to agree with your proposal.

> If only all legal battles could be solved with an old-fashion duel. Even better, lets make the lawyers fight to the death. Solves both the legal side and serves as a nice control of the lawyer population...

Ironically, the elimination of trial by combat was seen as a great advance, casting away a practice that was "superstitious and barbarous to the last degree".

And so the circle is closed.

Check out The Dosadi Experiment by Frank Herbert.

I love this idea, and in a society that prided itself on honor, Bethesda would take him up on it.

Unfortunately the law does not promote honorable behavior.

Remember, in Game of Thrones, that Bronn only became Tyrion's champion for the money, not any sense of honor.

What if Bethesda finds it easier to hire 3 top Quake 3 players for 1k each to fight Notch and friends? They might find it easier than going through the lawsuit.

What a wonderful precedent. The future of law: gamers

There's a science fiction book in this. Get writing!

Charlie Stross (cstross of this parish) has almost certainly already written it.

Ender's Game?

Well, okay, that's true (but not my primary point, since i've not read/seen Game of Thrones).

My point was that Bethesda is under no obligation to do this, and it's not clear to me that this would have legal binding. So in that sense they'd be accepting based on Notch's intentions (honorable or not), and I presume that Mojang would only agree based on their honorable intentions.

There are of course many ways to weasel out of straightforward agreements. That's why presidential debates are always so terrible.

I'm not sure why a legally counselled written contract wouldn't be considered legally binding.

That a contract has been drafted and signed, even in good faith, is only half the battle. It must also be enforced. The court can simply ignore some or all of a contract which is obviously unfair or exploitative to either party. Centuries of legislation and case law go into determining what sorts of clauses are, in fact, enforceable.

This is why you need a lawyer to draft a contract, and cannot just write whatever on a piece of paper and sign it. Even lawyers overreach, however; it's part of their job.

Seein as Bronn won the duel dishonourably by running away until the opponent was tired, does this mean Bethesda will win the match by camping?

How is fighting intelligently "dishonourable"? If you can't beat someone at their own game, force them to play your game.

Honor is always about doing things you don't have to, or not doing things which you could do.

No need, I'd wager Carmack and friends are plenty good at their own game.

Hmm? Bethesda didn't make Quake, if that's what you're saying...

Bethesda bought id in '09, so yes they do.

Er, okay. That seems unrelated since they never "made Quake" and likely have little/no influence over Carmack himself.

But oh man: Carmack vs Notch. Imagine it.

Nevermind, I hope Bethesda can somehow persuade/pressure/bribe/extort Carmack into that. Because... C'mon. Carmack vs Notch.

Both Bethesda and id are subsidiaries of Zenimax[1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenimax

They suck (sic! :) ) badly compared to remotely professional players. Tim Willits even said so himself just recently on Quakecon.

Some gamers might want to support the small indie guy and might offer their labour and skills to notch for free. Some might take the money and go help out the big guy. It would be like some medieval power struggle over a throne, with knights and dukes allying themselves to one side or the other. :)

The top Quake 3 players are probably good friends with - if not even themselves - hopelessly addicted Minecraft players. If this was id Software against Mojang, then maybe id had the leverage but Bethesda is not necessarily considered good by the Q3 community.

Notch can easily afford to pay top Quake 3 players too though.

I think this idea is funny, but a future where legal disputes are settled by whoever is a better gamer/swordsman/chess player is moving back toward feudalism. Ideally, the winner of the legal dispute should have something to do with the merits of the case. I realize that there are weights on the scales of justice that are heavier for the one who has more money, but if it comes down to might-makes-right, the little guy really doesn't stand a chance.

Money is a weight on the side of the big guy whether the competition is Quake or Court.

Money can always buy you an advantage in a duel, just like it buys you better lawyers.

Come on Bethesda. Take the bait. It's great PR. (I'm sure valve would do it)

Except it's highly doubtful Valve would've sent the C & D in the first place.

Considering that they're the guys making "Dota 2", I'm inclined to agree.

Well they did hire the creator of Dota to work on it for them, not like they've stolen the name from him..

IceFrog isn't strictly the author of DotA. DotA is, if memory serves, based on an even older mod called Aeon of Strife. And DotA's development history is riddled with support from the WC3 mapping community so it's really unfair to name any one individual as a sole creator or rights holder. There really is no rights holder to the game and there have been at least 3 major releases by distinct developing groups: Demigod (GPG), LoL and HoN.

He's not the author, but he's "the face of Dota" at this point.

(Well, he's "the person of Dota", at least. Mr. Ismail is far too reclusive to ever show his face.)

Unfortunately, it pains me to say this, but this is the truth: If you tried to commercially release your own DOTA, and if you'd copied skills/heroes/items from the original game, Valve, or rather Ismail, would sic lawyers on you immediately. I know this because they tried to do it to S2, the creators of HoN (a very similar game).

So it's unfortunately not true "There really is no rights holder to the game". Valve/Icefrog hold all the cards at this point.

Valve may have creative rights on the details, but I'd be surprised if they could convince a judge that they own the rights to a whole genre of gaming. Especially when there's already a plethora of popular games already under it.

True, however, the details are DOTA. League of Legends isn't DOTA at all, for example.

It's hard to explain. You could only really understand if you'd played the game. "DOTA" roughly means "A highly/specifically competitive game, wherein that game also includes specific heroes and items which competitive players have spent years practicing with and the community in general have come to expect". For example both DOTA and HoN have an item which grants you 10 seconds of magic immunity on use, and can't be used again for more than 1 minute. So if your game doesn't, then it's probably not "a DOTA".

HoN and DOTA both share about ~75% of the "details" (and almost 100% of the details that matter) so it's very much "a DOTA". Whereas League of Legends shares maybe 5%.

I am baffled by this behavior. Everytime, and I mean everytime, I see IceFrog given credit to DotA, there will always be that guy who tries to discredit him in one form or another. You gotta give that guy credit for putting things together. He may be a shrewd person in real life from what I've heard, but at least he did a fine job at what he does.

A fine analogy, I think, is Linux kernel. Would you not give Linus credit for being in charge (accepting/rejecting patches etc) eventhough he admitted more than once that he doesn't do much nowadays; everything is mostly from the community.

> "Everytime, and I mean everytime, I see IceFrog given credit to DotA, there will always be that guy who tries to discredit him"

Probably because the claim he invented DotA is wrong. I'm not trying to discredit him, he's probably the single largest single contributor to the genre. But saying he invented it is wrong and a smack in the face to those who did.

It would seem Bethesda fell victim to one of the classic blunders - The most famous of which is "never get involved in a land war in Asia" - but only slightly less well-known is this: "Never go against a Swede when trademark is on the line"!

Love the Princess Bride reference! I even read this in that character's voice (what was his name?)

Vizzini (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093779/) - played by Wallace Shawn (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001728/)

This is tangential, but if you overlook the issue, then you'll find that this is how you do PR. Gaming even the serious things out is the perfect stage for myth making. Asking a giant to battle you in a game over a trademark is the stuff of legends.

The fact that Bethesda has engaged counsel means they've already invested in defending their trademark rights. Agreeing to any "contest" in which they'd abandon their mark would serve as record (to other competitors) that their mark is diluted. No chance of that happening. Unfortunately this is a legal issue now, not a game.

There is no abandoning or diluting going on. The trademark is still intact, and they take the word "Scrolls" off the table as an issue.

Now if you decided to create a game called "The Younger Scrolls" they could still go after you! The fact that "Scrolls" as a singular word is no longer contestable would hold no baring on the legal action taken against you.

Bethesda's parent company owns Quake 3, so it's an away game for Notch.

I thought Bethesda was a city in Maryland. Talk about name confusion!

Bethesda Softworks started in Bethesda, MD. It's now located just up the road in Rockville, MD.

<sarcasm>Yeah, it sounds like Bethesda is the one who's violating intellectual property</sarcasm>

I think they should actually make their lawyers play the Quake 3 match.

This is a great solution because it can settle things quickly with less stress and let everyone get back to work.

Gamers are _not_ going to confuse Notch's and Bethesda's use of the word "scrolls," so I don't see why either company should take this too seriously. (Re-naming a game is less work than a drawn-out lawsuit.)

Seems like a brilliant move on Notch's part.

The economic factors are totally different here, but still it reminded me of:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2690799

quote:

"See the following paper for an economic analysis of trial by battle:

http://www.law.yale.edu/documents/pdf/Intellectual_Life/LEO....

I particularly liked this quote: "[I]t's reasonable to expect to find a large number of retained legal representatives under a legal system in which people feel that their property rights are constantly threatened by rent-seeking litigiousness or in which rampant rent-seeking opportunity gives them an incentive to behave litigiously themselves. The rarity of retained champions in medieval England therefore suggests that rent seeking under trial by battle wasn't rampant.'"

Can this method be adopted to solve software patent disputes?

I wonder if Notch thought this through... Bethesda can draw on id employees to play for them.

Does that count as legally defending your trademark on Bethesda's part?

And if Bethesda is right in that "Scrolls" is too similar to "The Elder Scrolls", as to cause confusion in the market place, how would a game of Quake rectify that?

They can specifically give him a license to use the name "Scrolls" under certain conditions (a disclaimer that this game is unrelated). Then there is no issue of failing to protect their trademark.

In ancient Mesopotamia (according to my grade 10 ancient history class a long time ago), when one man accused another of a crime, the accused would be thrown into the Euphrates river. If the man died, then the gods decided he was guilty. If the man survived, then he was falsely accused, and the accused gained possession of the accuser's wife.

I believe the point of a duel in this context, though, is simply to avoid an elongated legal process, arguing something so ridiculous and trivial. Notch just wants to keep developing.

Not exactly; I mean, sure, he clearly doesn't care a massive amount, but if his only aim was to keep developing then he could always just give in and change the name without trying to get this PR out of it.

Funnily enough, this got reversed by the time of the witch hunts.

Now I want to see Larry and Steve battle it out over Angry Birds.

I like notch, even before this, but now I feel morally obligated to buy Minecraft even if won't ever play it, and Scrolls too :).

Tonight on xplay Todd from Bethblog will be on. Rewteet?

https://twitter.com/#!/jasongiedymin/status/1038604301575249...

https://twitter.com/#!/JasonGiedymin/status/1038613727057018...

This reminds me of a certain high stakes rock-paper-scissors match... For future reference, use scissors against normal people: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/29/arts/design/29scis.html

According to Fez from That '70s Show, rock always wins!

I have no clue who Bethesda is, but if they took him up on the offer it would be great PR in the eyes of gaming(?) consumers. It would show they're cool and don't take themselves too seriously. They'd certainly win cool points from me.

Do it, Bethesda.

Bethesda being the company responsible for the Elder Scrolls (Morrowind, Oblivion and now Skyrim, amongst others), and for Fallout3 and Fallout: New Vegas.

And oddly enough, by way of their recent purchase of id, Quake 3.

They publish fallout, but develop the elderscrolls games themselves.

Right. But, Bethesda already have a stellar reputation in the gaming community, their "The Elder Scrolls" series is many many orders of magnitude more well known than Mojang's upcoming game "Scrolls". The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is one of the most anticipated games this year.

Mojang and Notch have far far more to gain from this than Bethesda do.

Thanks for this explanation. I've vaguely heard of Bethesda, but for some reason, it was attached to the old GEOS GUI for DOS, in my head.

I hadn't head of Elder Scrolls before. I'm a GTA/Battlefield/Minecraft junky, but thats about it for games.

it goes without saying that a 17 year old series is more well known than a new game. on the other hand, i have never referred to "The Elder Scrolls" as just "Scrolls". i've called it "Morrowind" or "Oblivion" and i'll probably refer to the new game as just "Skyrim". if i saw a game that was just called "Scrolls" i would not confuse it with Bethesda's games.

I'm not saying you would, I'm saying PR wise Mojang and Notch have everything to gain from settling this matter of law in a game of Quake, while Bethesda has very little.

I don't know anyone who plays The Elder Scrolls but I could see their fanbase calling it "Scrolls" for short. If not for trademark, they could just be trying to protect SERPs:

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&q=scrolls&tbs=... (query: scrolls)

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&q=scrolls+game&... (query: scrolls game)

You can clearly see that "scrolls" pulls up mostly pages about The Elder Scrolls. (You have to ignore the pages about the lawsuit.) Then again, Notch called his previous game Minecraft, which certainly makes you think of Warcraft and Starcraft. Sounds like this is just his shtick.

No one in TES's fanbase calls it "scrolls", we call it TES ("The Elder Scrolls"), because that's what Bethesda calls it, over and over and over again. Or we mention the particular games by name and leave out the series title: Daggerfall, Arena, Skyrim, etc.

That is my experience as well. I've never heard anyone refer to it as just "scrolls."

I have heard all of the things you mention, though (TES, The Elder Scrolls, Daggerfall, etc.), but never ONCE have I heard it called just "scrolls." Ever.

I played every version of The Elder Scrolls. And I never called it "Scrolls". And never saw anyone in the forums use that term to describe any of the games.

awesome way to settle frivolous lawsuits

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