From
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/08/minecraft-maker-jokingly-calls-quake-challenge-poor-choice-vows-fight.ars...Attorney and game industry analyst Mark Methenitis told Wired.com that the publisher was just doing what any prudent trademark holder would normally do.
“The basic question here is whether the two trademarks are likely to be confused,” Methenitis said in an e-mail. “There’s a pretty well-established test for this under US trademark law, and based on those factors, Bethesda has a reasonable argument.”
These factors, which include “similarities of the goods involved” and the physical proximity of goods, according to legal resource BitLaw.com, seem to support Bethesda’s case. While hardcore gamers would generally know the difference between Scrolls and The Elder Scrolls—one is a card game and the other is an epic fantasy adventure—Methenitis says average shoppers might think the two are related, since both titles include the word scrolls, both are games and both have similar fantasy themes (at a very shallow level).
“To me, the real question is the strength of The Elder Scrolls,” Methenitis said, pointing out that people usually refer to The Elder Scrolls games by their subtitles: Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, etc. “Even then, I wonder about the relative strength of Scrolls without Elder. That strength of the mark factor, along with evidence or lack of evidence of actual confusion, could be the determining factor...”
Read that last paragraph twice.