Sheridans Advises Leading Independent Developer Mojang in Successfully Defending Interim Injunction to Use the Name "Scrolls"

Sheridans’ Interactive team has been working with Advokatfirman Lindahl KB in Sweden, and has advised Mojang AB on its successful defence of an action for an interim injunction by ZeniMax - the owner of "THE ELDER SCROLLS" trade mark.

Scrolls is the next game from the creators of Minecraft, the hugely successful PC game with over 14 million users despite still being in the beta stage.

ZeniMax sought an interim injunction to restrain the developer of Minecraft from using the title Scrolls for its new game. ZeniMax argued that the use of the "Scrolls" title by Mojang was an infringement of its registered trade mark.

Despite ZeniMax needing only to satisfy the lower threshold of demonstrating "probable grounds" of trade mark infringement in order to succeed, the Swedish courts found in favour of Mojang and refused to grant the interim injunction.

Alex Chapman commented: "This is a great result for Mojang. Despite the burden of proof being in ZeniMax's favour the court has agreed with Mojang's arguments that the relevant consumers would not be confused between the two marks and that the distinctiveness of ZeniMax's mark is dependant on it being used as a whole rather than its component words."

A demo of Mojang's new game will be revealed next month.