a system and method ... for preventing unauthorized access to electronic data stored on an electronic device.
It is not known at this time what, if anything, this means for Mojang. Of note, Markus "Notch" Persson has certainly voiced his opinion on the matter, stating that he "will throw piles of money at making sure they don't get a cent". Little else is known about the lawsuit at this time.
Notch has made the lawsuit PDF available for viewing, which you can see by clicking here. He has also posted a detailed write-up on his perspective on software patents - you can view it by clicking here.
Uniloc appears to be suing numerous other gaming producers allegedly violating this patent, including Square Enix, Electronic Arts and others.
Any further specifics of the case will be covered as they develop.
UPDATE: Ric Richardson has posted his views on the situation as well, which you can read by clicking here. It is important to note that Mr. Richardson has had no direct part in the lawsuit of Uniloc vs. Mojang.
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This week, David and Toby talk about Minecon 2012, Creeper clothes and other awesome Minecraftiness - check it out!
Someone did there research HAHAHAHAHAAHHA
And this must be the 4th or 5th post pointing out that we all know it's spelt wrong.
Thank the gods that grammar Nazi's don't rule the world. We would all be shot.
Profanity doesn't help your argument, but I feel ya.
Also... "Non-Premium"? Is that some fancy term for pirated? You are pirating Minecraft and you are complaining about a lawsuit against Mojang?
You are pretty much ignoring my point there, that you are trying to be a **** who is complaining that an asshole like you has wasted 25 dollars for using the Mojang's users, servers and launcher to play Minecraft, when there are better ways which are free and are not technically pirated. Furthermore, I am not spending my life reading posts and responding to them to simply start a flame war, I am responding to a person which is accusing me of pirating Minecraft, when that is impossible as they have their own login servers which will not allow anybody to play Minecraft if they do not login. Also, bolded text neither gives any strength to your point, you are simply outlining your text from the rest of other people, trying to show how superior you are over other people thinking *hahaha my text is fatter than theirs, it must be better*.
I did not confuse China and Japan. It happens in both countries.
I don't think it is likely that the jury will consist of minecraft players because generally, in corporate lawsuits, the jury is a select group of people. And plus, any minecraft player would be biased anyway. And since the lawsuit is over a slight fragment of code that the players don't see, it wouldn't really help that much.
That is a very interesting post... It just leads me to believe that we all shouldn't say or believe anything too fervently until we know for sure what the situation is. Misinformation seems to cocoon cases like this, and that last thing I want to do is base a strong opinion on weak facts...
Idea #2: Get Godzilla Jr from the animated show Godzilla the Series and have him rip stuff apart.
Because that's what I get from this, it seems to state that Patent 067 in fact is a patent stateing that Uniloc owns an idea.
This makes no sense, I always thought that you could in fact not claim legal rights to an *idea* only just a certain copy of whatever that idea created.
As an example, it was the same with the Bethesda lawsuit. They wanted to sue over a word mainly due to the fact that it might "confuse" people.
It has been my understanding that if you own a patent to a certain type of software, that patent only deals with the software it's self and not what the software does.
Can anyone clarify this?
no, because it says "including but not limited to"
that extends it to all mojang products.
however, Mojang has a strong case, as the patent is extremly vauge. the patent just says it covers an idea for a cellular security user verification system. and uniloc is suing a lot of other people over it, but considering the patent, why not sue apple and the cell-phone providers who actually use it?
They Spelled it Mindcraft.
Really.
dont be hatin on texas just because what someone did,im texan D: but this lawsuit is ridiculous if they are suing square enix and mojang I BE HATIN especially what its for(WTH is MINDcraft? its MINEcraft)
You are confusing different kinds of laws with each other. Not surprising because neither news reporters nor even most school teachers understand these laws very well. There is most certainly a difference between patents, trademarks, and copyrights.
Mojang owns the copyright to Minecraft, but not a patent to the concept of a voxel-based sandbox game. Mojang also owns the trademark to the name "Minecraft", so if you produce another game that allows you to place blocks to make stuff and call it "Minecraft", you are infringing upon Mojang's trademark for this game.
Bethesda was trying to enforce the trademark on their game called "Elder Scrolls", where Mojang was writing another game called simple "Scrolls". Frankly, I think this particular lawsuit by Bethesda had merit and it was necessary because a lack of enforcement of trademarks has those terms turned into generic terms. An example of a former trademark that has become "generic" is "elevator", which used to apply to the brand name of a lifting device manufactured by the Otis Company (Now called the Otis Elevator Company). They are still in business BTW, but the name of their product now is commonly used for any similar device.
The purpose of a trademark is to let people know who actually made the device or in the case of software actually wrote the thing. If you are claiming to have something made by one person but in fact it is made by somebody totally different, that is fraud and legally speaking a kind of lie that should have your face slapped if you do something like that. For example, if you have a pair of blue denim pants and claim they are made by Levi Strauss (aka "Levi's") but in fact were made by some company in China out of cheaper materials, you aren't telling the truth about what it is that you have.
There certainly is room to say that a box with the game "Elder Scrolls" might be confused with a similar box titled simply "Scrolls". At least that was the point of the lawsuit and what Bethesda was asserting. In fact in the settlement Bethesda simply gave a license to Mojang to make a game called "Scrolls" in a way that still doesn't dilute the Bethesda trademark. If I made another game and called it "Scrolls", I would be violating the trademarks of both Mojang and Bethesda. That certainly is not cool or right.
You are thinking copyright here again. Mojang owns the copyright on Minecraft, so if you have a version of Minecraft you are not authorized to give a copy of that game to a friend or relative. In other words only Mojang has the "right to copy" (aka "copyright") the software. This applies to books and movies as well and is the same principle. The ideas in those books, movies, or games are free to be reused if you write something else from scratch (with some limits), but you can't just copy those materials and pretend that you wrote them or simply give them away.
A patent is something different though. It says that you have come up with something unique that nobody has thought of before (and there is an extensive review process that supposedly makes sure nobody else has come up with that idea before) and after explaining in detail how that device works (note it is a device we are talking about... more on that in a bit) the government grants you an exclusive right to make anything even remotely like that device. If somebody else makes that device, they are violating the patent.
The problem is where computer software is being used that gets real confusing, and gets into the issue of software patents. A mathematical formula is explicitly not permitted to be patented. Electronic circuits on the other hand can be patented because they are a physical device that requires manufacturing skill in order to make them.
Now I'm going to get into Minecraft terms here that I hope some can relate to here. Think of some of the Redstone devices you may have seen players make in the game. They can do all sorts of nifty things including make chicken cookers, mob grinders, transportation devices, and so on. In theory all of these devices that players make using Redstone could even be patented by some enterprising player who wants to be a real jerk to the Minecraft player community. Here is where it gets sort of weird: All of these devices, while in theory they can be physically created, all exist in a virtual computer world that is ultimately only software. The same thing can also be said about "real world" circuits that are put on programmable devices like a FPGA (field-programmable gate array) or other programmable logic devices.
Ultimately, computer software can be written in the form of electronic circuits, or any electronic circuit can be emulated or simulated in a computer using only software. I don't know who would be so stupid to even try it, but you could in theory build a massive world using Redstone circuits that would be able to "run" Microsoft Windows or even simply be Microsoft Windows for all practical purposes. I'm not saying that it would be emulating the Intel Pentium CPU, but rather the operating system software itself in raw Redstone circuits. You might be hitting the far lands by the time you are done and would take a million years for it to be built, but it could be done.
Because of this weird sort of mash-up between computer software and electronic circuits is where software patents come in, and in this case the lawsuit against Mojang. Uniloc has been supposedly granted a patent on the ability to verify the licensing of computer software on mobile devices. Since Mojang has a computer game they have written for mobile devices that requires you to log in to the Mojang servers and verify that you have paid for a copy of Minecraft (the Minecraft mobile device app), it is being asserted that Mojang is in violation of that patent.
Mojang can claim a few things here though to say it doesn't apply to them. First, they can say that the way they are verifying users have a valid copy of Minecraft is somehow different than what the Uniloc patent claims to be about. Also, Mojang could attempt to prove that the patent was issued to Uniloc in error and that it shouldn't have been granted in the first place... because it wasn't a unique idea and wasn't really anything original in the first place. Mojang could also assert jurisdiction issues, in other words claiming that by being in Sweden that American law doesn't apply to them... but that issue doesn't really fly as Mojang does sell copies of Minecraft to people in the USA, and in particular to people in the cities of Houston and Austin, Texas (aka "eastern Texas").
I hope that cleans things up for you a bit. For myself, I think Uniloc is nuts for filing this lawsuit and it may come back and bite them hard. I think Texas has a barratry law which could make Mojang owning Uniloc when all is said and done here as well. In other words if the Uniloc lawyers can be found to knowingly file a lawsuit that has no legal merit to even be heard, they could go to prison for abusing the legal system. That supposedly stops lawyers from filing a lawsuit based upon stuff that is made up and nonsense.
It will be a fun couple of years while Mojang plows through this lawsuit. Similar kinds of lawsuits have taken as much as 12-15 years to work their way through the court system, so I certainly don't expect this to be resolved any time soon unless Notch capitulates and pays Uniloc the licensing fee (*cough* extortion payments *cough*).
No. That is for all practical purposes meaningless and can be attributed to a clerical error. It would take even a stupid lawyer (somebody with a really low IQ) a whole 5 minutes or so in front of a judge to clean up, and would be highly doubtful that Mojang would even protest that from happening. If the name mis-spelling remains until after the judgement is rendered, that would be a different story however. Don't get hung up on this one issue because it is won't impact the case at all.