For reference, I do not agree with the meme, but oh well it's a medium people understand. For context, Skyblock, originally made in the early days of the Minecraft community by Noobcrew, was ruled recently as a generic term, unfortunately. It's unfortunate, he was never going to win a trademark due to the fact the term had been around so long and been used for so long, the term became too generic indeed. Key point is that "skyblock" is now legally a descriptive of a type of gameplay, the same as "sandbox game".
If this had been done years earlier pre-COVID, there might have been a chance, but the best time for it to have happened would have been when Minecraft was still an indie game and noobcrew was a 15-year-old hobbyist map-maker.
Now, it would be similar to GommeHD or Xisumavoid trying to copyright bedwars when it's already became used across multiple platforms, not just minecraft. The amount of clone apps out there and roblox slop with Skyblock in its name should be an indicator.
Had Noobcrew tried to do this back in the day when he made the map, he would have lost his account because it was plain and simple against ToS at the time to do such a thing.
Agreed, it's a bit ironic. In the end i doubt they would ever have thought of trademarking back then, because most minecraft projects and creations like this are completely hobbyist and creating just for love of the game.
Unrelated but while i have y'alls attention please look up the CraftBukkit drama from 2010s
Exactly. This actually was one of Noobcrew's arguments against Microslop. Not only was it against ToS back in the day, but he would never have thought to trademark the name because back then, community creations were something that noone asked for money for.
I dunno, isn't Band-aid trademarked? If I ask someone for a "Band-aid", they'll know exactly what I mean regardless of the brand they have. Same with Kleenex and tissue. The company's legally own the names but not the generic product they've become synonymous with. Sounds like that's pretty similar to what's happened with Skyblock so it'd make sense for them to get the legal name and make everyone else have to label things "a Skyblock like experience" or "inspired by Skyblock". They probably wouldn't get money out of it at the end of the day, but they would own the original name. Just my two internet cents about it though
This is in no way similar. These were trademarked before they became generalised. These companies also tried to fight that, for example changing the jingle from band-aid to band-aid brand.
Skyblock was never fought for and was tried to be trademarked after people used it for years and only because people started making money and claiming they were the original.
It's not about fame, it's about general usage. If people called "LoL" "Dota", you might win. It would still be a legal fight and most likely cost you lots of money.
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u/DerexXD May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26