So there are two books that are in the Elder Scrolls Universe; The Infernal City, and Lord of Souls.

I was just curious if the author, Greg Keyes, had to obtain permission from Bethesda or Zenimax or if publishing a book that takes place within the ES universe is protected under the fair use laws?

Anyone here know the legalities of such a thing?

Yes, he would have had to obtain permission, if he was not contracted to write them. He is using the "TES" name, which is trade marked.

It was Bethesda who contacted him. "We love your books and it would be great if you could write some TES books for us" kind of thing.

If he had published TES books without persmission he would have been royally sued.

Some of the events in the books are also directly referenced in Skyrim. But yeah, you don't get away publishing, for profit, a title from a trademarked franchise without permission. Even Star Wars is once again closed IP.

if they had not had an agreement with Bethesda, they wouldn't have been a store shelves for more than a week.. lawyers are good like that

Heh.. The best are GW's crack team of IP enforcement lawyers. Less than 24 hours for Amazon to be hit with a desist order for Spot the Space Marine. It was a totally assinine suit, and they lost (seems to be a running theme with GWs suits lately...) But still, those bastards be on the ball.

Cool, thanks for the raplies guys. I tried to search for this on Google but only kept getting advertisemants for the books.

I was just curious. Thanks everyone.

No worries. In this regard, The Infernal City and Lord of Souls are actually more official than most of Kirkbride's stuff.