It looks like Bethesda and Mojang, the team behind Minecraft, are the latest set of gaming companies involved in a legal dispute. This one is over the indie developer’s use of the term “Scroll”s in an upcoming game title. Bethesda is less than happy with the word choice, asserting that it will create confusion, causing damage to their longstanding Elder Scroll series of RPGs. Doesn’t make any sense? Well then you’re not a lawyer.

Bethesda, through their legal team, contacted Markus Persson (usually known as Notch) and asked for more information about Scrolls. This is a far cry from a lawsuit, but when it’s followed up by a 15 page legal document telling Notch to refrain from using the term in his next game them, things get a bit more serious. (As far as we know there has been no lawsuit yet, but in the title of his blog post Notch did write “Bethesda are suing us”.)

For their part Bethesda and their Swedish legal council don’t seem to want to play ball with the up-and-coming Mojang, who’ve done extremely well with Minecraft but lack the deep pockets of a major publisher. Minecraft has proven that Notch and his team know how to succeed and despite the ridiculousness of prohibiting another company from using an unadorned word (Notch said he was willing to agree to never put a word ahead of “Scrolls”), this does seem to fall under the category of routine trademark protection. He objects to the Bethesda’s claim that their Elder Scrolls trademark prevents the use of the word “scrolls” (and presumably “elders”) by other gaming companies, but is willing concede come ground as the word is clearly in their title.

Bethesda does come off as looking like the evil empire in this situation. Notch has already alluded to them being the next Langdell, as in Tim Langell, the game developer and founder of Edge Games. Langdell claims to hold the trademark for the word “edge” as it related to video games, and has sued, multiple times, to protect it. He sued EA in response to Mirror’s Edge and Mobigames for their iPhone game Edge. (If you haven’t figured it out by now, comparing Bethesda to Langdell’s antics was not a compliment.)

Notch's solution to the matter? Trial by combat via Quake III.

Scrolls is actually going to be a fantasy-themed virtual card game.