cease and desist letter

A couple months ago, Mojang revealed that Bethesda had sent a cease and desist letter to the company over the use of the word "scrolls" in its latest game.

Since then, Markus Persson, aka Notch, the creative mind behind Mojang and its massively successful game Minecraft, has been in a public relations spree against Bethesda.

AdamR was the first of a few of you to send in this story of how lawyers for Lucasfilm sent a cease-and-desist letter to a group of Star Wars fans who had organized a (free, not for profit) Star Wars movie marathon (all 13-hours) at a bar in Brooklyn.

It's the sort of fun thing that Star Wars fans might enjoy and which would increase their connection to the franchise.

Last fall, we wrote about Entrepreneur Magazine's ridiculous attempt to get an entrepreneur/writer/speaker who was pitching to use the name "entrepreneurology.com" to give up the domain.

Reader Clint points us to the news that the Pac-10 conference (a university "sports league" effective) recently added two new schools to the conference, making it the Pac-12 conference now.

Of course, after they did this and went to register the domain pac12.com, they discovered that a business man in Utah already owned it, and had owned it for five years -- long before there was any idea of a Pac-12 conference.

Ima Fish alerts us to yet another bizarre state law against free speech. John Gibson, a lawyer from Lubbock, Texas, who is an expert in workers' compensation, is suing the state after it sent him a cease and desist letter for having a blog at TexasWorkersCompLaw.com.

The actual story behind this is a few years old, but it was just retold in a recent video by a social media person at NPR, about how the broadcaster got control over their Facebook fan page that had been set up by a fan: Basically, this guy -- Geoff Campbell -- noticed that NPR didn't have a Facebook fan page.

SongLifter points us to the news that the California State University system has sent a cease-and-desist letter to the site NoteUtopia, for enabling students to buy and sell various class notes (among other things).

On top of that, it has sent emails to students at its universities, warning them that using a site like NoteUtopia can result in discipline -- including expulsion.

It's no secret that many people are quite confused about how patents, trademark and copyright law work at times.

In fact, we've frequently pointed out that it's rather unfair to lump trademarks in with copyright and patents, because trademarks are so different.

Whereas copyright and patents are all about a right to exclude via a monopoly privilege, trademark is about consumer protection, and is under an entirely different part of the constitution.

Whoo boy.

Consumerist points us to an odd story, where George Lucas has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Wicked Lasers, saying that the company's Pro Arctic Laser is too similar in design to the infamous lightsaber from the Star Wars flicks.

But here's where it gets a little odd.