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Bethesda sues Notch over the use of the word "Scrolls"


yoba333

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I saw a recent trademark lawsuit between Walgreen's Drug stores and Wegman's Grocery chain where the suit was over on the shape of the W in the name - Walgreen's claimed that the shape of the W 'could' confuse customers. Looking at them I could not see enough similarity to cause confusion even if they were both in the same business. (drugs vs groceries)

Link: http://consumerist.com/2010/11/walgreens-sues-wegmans-over-the-letter-w.html

 

And a link to a trademark attorney's site who commented on how absurd this is: http://www.yourtrademarkattorney.com/blog/walgreens-wegmans-trademark-opposition/

 

The suit was settled when Wegmans who had that W in their logo in the 1930s agreed to stop using that style W by 2012. But Walgreen's has only used that W in their logo since 1951 but did register the trademark on it. Unsure of how that could be right. My opinion, Wegmans has prior use.

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"Unsure of how that could be right. My opinion, Wegmans has prior use. "

 

I think the 'prior use' argument only carries any weight with unregistered trademark claims (in legal disputes over such rights) if the logo or whatever is widely recognised as belonging to that company (like Shell Oil's shell symbol for example). Otherwise the registered trademark would be seen as the legit one.

 

Of course it's always down to court judgements in the end.

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I support Bethesda. I believe they do have a right to sue over the use of SCROLLS since Bethesda already copyrighted that. Notch should of thought about it before they decided to call their thing SCROLLS. I'm sure there is more details into why they decided to sue but I'm sure they have good evidence to support their lawsuit. This only will make me support Bethesda more, protect one of my fav companies. I don't give *beep* about Minecraft...sry that's just the truth :P
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If that were true Ayegor, we'd see companies taking hits and each other simply because their names and products have a similar word. Shouldn't be able to copyright a word.

you can't copyright a single word -- known issue - after all the single word was already in public domain for centuries

 

but if you could

 

then you could copyright a single letter within a word

 

Imagine McDonalds suing you because your game used the letter S

 

actually its almost a ludicrous as this is

Edited by Fonger
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A small list of game(s) using the word scrools

 

- The Scrolls of Abadon

- The Magnetic Scrolls Collection

- The Wizard's Scrolls

- Age of Wulin - Legend of the Nine Scrolls

 

 

A small list of game(s) using the word elder

- Otome wa Boku ni Koi Shiteru: 2-nin no Elder

- Runes of Magic Chapter III: The Elder Kingdoms

- Valhalla Knights: Eldar Saga

 

 

A very LONG list of game(s) using the word - THE -

- seriously, do you expect me to copy paste all that here? http://www.thenexusforums.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/facepalm.gif

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I support Bethesda. I believe they do have a right to sue over the use of SCROLLS since Bethesda already copyrighted that. Notch should of thought about it before they decided to call their thing SCROLLS. I'm sure there is more details into why they decided to sue but I'm sure they have good evidence to support their lawsuit. This only will make me support Bethesda more, protect one of my fav companies. I don't give *beep* about Minecraft...sry that's just the truth :P

Sorry to labour the point, but the issue is trademark not copyright: they're totally different legal constructs. It's true nevertheless that you can't claim copyright on a single word, or even a phrase. There are many examples of different songs, or book titles, with the same name, even though the music and lyrics, or other creative content, are copyright-protected.

 

I do wonder how a unique or highly original song title could be protected, should the composer wish to do so, though. If the Rolling Stones didn't want somebody coming out with their own song called Jumping Jack Flash they'd have to use the trademark option. It can all get very confusing :biggrin:

Edited by roquefort
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