Apparently suing season has begun, and once again Bethesda's legal team is on the attack after having finished business with Notch over the Scrolls name awhile back. This time (as reported by Gamespot), the legal dispute comes from a Norwegian Fallout fansite by the name of Fallout-Posters.com. What did he do wrong? The site freely distributes fan art posters of the Fallout series, and apparently that infringes upon Bethesda's intellectual property. The owner of the site Erling Loken Andersen was threatened to not only take down the fan-made artwork, but to also hand over his site's domain address or else suffer a lawsuit.
The site owner's response to Bethesda's actions:
Erling Loken Andersen said:
Erling Loken Andersen said:
What I find baffling about this whole situation, much like the Scrolls lawsuit, is that the site poses zero threat to Bethesda's business. Bethesda has nothing to gain from doing this with the exception of a bad reputation, so why do it? I'm glad he's standing up against this copyright bullying and that the legal team will wise up and back off. It should also be noted that recently Bethesda has trademarked the phrase "Fus Ro Dah", I fear the actions that might be taken against an innocent person who wishes to make Fus Ro Dah fan material now.
To also clear up some confusion that I've seen in the past, the developers of the company (Todd Howard, etc) have nothing to do with these lawsuits (and approve of fan made material) nor have control over the legal team, and as such are not deserving of any criticism from these events.
