Not too long ago, Minecraft creator Notch received word from Bethesda that they felt the name of Notch’s team’s next game, Scrolls, conflicted with the name of Bethesda’s golden franchise, The Elder Scrolls. Of course, Notch claims that choosing to name their next game Scrolls has nothing to do with Bethesda’s franchise, and felt the lawsuit was a tad unwarranted because the conflict is based on one common word — it’s like if Gears of War and God of War were encroaching on each others’ trademarks because the word “war” is in the title.
After praising Bethesda and assuming it’s their lawyers being unwarrantedly confrontational rather than the actual game developers, what does Notch do? Challenges them to a Quake 3 match to settle the lawsuit.
Notch proposed that both Mojang and Bethesda choose three of their best players, each team selects one map of their choice, and then the sparring teams play twenty minute matches on each map, and the highest total frag count per team across both matches wins, you know, the lawsuit. Notch proposed that if Mojang wins, Bethesda drops the lawsuit, and if Bethesda wins, Mojang will change the name of the game to something Bethesda is okay with. Regardless of the outcome, Notch also offers to have some “small text” somewhere in the game saying it is not related to The Elder Scrolls in any way.
Notch ends his proposal with the simple sentence, “I am serious, by the way,” so hopefully either Bethesda accepts the challenge and video games become a way to judge and enact law, or the story gets around enough to the point where Bethesda’s developers hear of it, and tell their lawyers to knock it off (if this is their lawyers’ doing, of course).
(via The Word of Notch)
