What I heard is that if they don't do shit like that, the copyright claim to the Elder Scrolls games can be contested on the grounds that they don't defend their copyright.
What? That's like saying that because you don't prosecute your neighbour for falsely using your name, you no longer have the right not to be robbed.
There's so much fail in this discussion. Let's clear up a couple of points:
First, copyright law and trademark law are
not related, interdependent, or similar in purpose, scope or effect. Copyright law applies to a specific work of art (and in recent times, software) and is automatically assigned to the author upon creation of said work. It is intended to provide a temporary monopoly on the distribution of a specific work in order to encourage publication of creative works.
Trademark law, on the other hand, applies to a brand, or the name of a product -- it is unrelated to that product's actual content, but rather intended to provide protection for a
name. This ultimately benefits users of the work to which that name applies by preventing third parties from masquerading their product under the same title. It also differs from copyright law in that it is not automatic -- a registered trademark must be applied for, and an unregistered trademark must still be actively used in order to be honoured in court.
Second, copyright does not go away just because you aren't enforcing your artificial monopoly on the work. In fact, this is a very big problem in cases where software authors give their software away but do not consider the copyright that is automatically granted to them when doing so -- simply giving away the work does not cause you to lose the exclusive right to distribute it, and such software cannot be included in many free software distributions even though it is freely available to use. It is even more ludicrous to suggest that not enforcing a
trademark -- something completely unrelated to a copyright -- could cause one's copyright to be jeopardised.
Now, what you
might have heard is that if they don't defend their
trademark, then their
trademark can be contested. This is a valid and correct point, and this may indeed be the basis on which they filed a lawsuit. However, as I've said above, this has absolutely nothing to do with their
copyright on works of authorship.
Please do not confuse these issues.
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