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!
Seriously, the PDF says "Mindcraft" and that Ric Richardson guy called Mojang "Majong" — 3 times.
Definitely patent trolls.
Although Ric has nothing to do with this and hate mail is not allowed, he still deserves something for referring to Mojang AB as "Majong".
district and elsewhere in Texas, including at least claim 107, without the consent or authorization
of Uniloc, by or through making, using, offering for sale, selling and/or importing Android based
applications for use on cellular phones and/or tablet devices that require communication with a
server to perform a license check to prevent the unauthorized use of said application, including,
but not limited to, MINDCRAFT
God, whoever typed it like that deserves to go die in a hole
I'd also like to point out, patents usually last twenty years. Uniloc was invented and patented twenty years ago.
And come on, they called it Mindcraft.
I love mahjong!
I just saw the tweet: https://twitter.com/notch/status/227667695804497920
The problems with abandoning the U.S. market is that it is so huge that it is hard to ignore. For things like video games, it can be the difference between staying profitable and not. Basically for a mass produced consumer product (which is the case of Minecraft), throwing away literally half of your market simply for political reasons is a tough choice to make.
Comparing software companies which sell to a mass audience to a bicycle manufacturer who makes custom bikes is not even really comparing the same thing. They may not need to sell to America as the competition on an international scale is much harder and there are logistical issues where the actual number of sales they will lose by refusing to sell to Americans is so minor they can dismiss it anyway. This particular company (since we are dealing with hypothetical comparisons as you haven't said what company it is) is likely at their manufacturing capacity anyway, so selling a few hundred bikes a year to America isn't worth the hassle.
Since I happen to live in America, it is a bit harder for me to walk away from selling to my own country where the laws would still apply to me anyway (even if I left and renounced citizenship, it would still take several years for me to get out of those kind of lawsuits easily). Still, I can understand why there might be some concern.
The reason why Samsung sells their stuff to America is precisely because of the size of the market. Ditto for many other companies. If you want to sell stuff here, you have to play by the rules that are here. The same applies to selling items in other countries, that all have their own little quirks about what you can do and how you can earn money by engaging in international trade. For the purposes of trade, you can't say that trade within the EU is really international anymore so I'm talking about what it takes for somebody in the EU to sell to a country like Pakistan or India or to other places with very different cultures, traditions, and laws. Perhaps you don't deal with the litigious nature of the American business climate (something that is discussed frequently in domestic political discussions here in America too I should note) but instead have to deal with flagrant corruption or having the government simply taking your inventory or refusing to let you bring the money you got from your customers in that country to some place outside of the country. If you want to see how weird that can get, see how Pepsi Cola was able to sell their soft drink in the former Soviet Union.
The one fly in the ointment for this kind of action by Notch, however, is that this same troll could come to Europe and try to file a lawsuit in the EU instead, perhaps even on the same patent. The laws are different in the EU, and I'm not sure if this particular patent would even qualify for protection in any EU country (likely not... I don't think it qualifies even under U.S. law), but refusing to settle or do any business in America may not work either. Since the business headquarters for this company isn't even in the USA but rather in Luxembourg, that would give them standing in EU courts as well... I'd dare say a stronger claim than even filing for a lawsuit in Texas.
Would Notch be content to sell his software to just Sweden, Russia, and China?
I doubt they will win this battle.
And Uniloc is sueing many other game companies. That, was not very smart at all.
Uniloc might as well sue everyone with security if its a security system.
The're sueing a famous game company, and i'm pretty sure the patent is outdated or
something. so in the end, its 100% failure.
No money for you!
I don't hate Ric, I hate the guy who sued mojang for the stupidest reason ever.
"Pheww. The reaction to the Mojang story is just going through the roof. over 8,000 visitors just to my site. Its amazing to see so many people loyal to this game maker. Good on him.
But guys please be fair.
1. I am not the inventor of the patent in question.
2. The personal attacks are a bit much don't you think?
3. Patents are there to stop people stealing a technology you invented and letting you have a fair shot at making a living from it. If Uniloc wants to test this in court it is there prerogative, the same way that Mojang contested the use of the copyright term "Scrolls" and took people to court."
the parts that i think were just dumb i put in bold
Won't do anything about the US patent system.
Notch went back on what he said about not selling in the US.
When he said he wouldn't be selling games in the US anymore, it felt like it was a knee-jerk reaction to the lawsuit.
In all honesty, it got me infuriated with Uniloc, which was probably the intended result.
Plus who in the hell patents software? I've heard of specially made bowls and other trinkets being patented, but software?
I'm from the US and I never knew you could do that, seeing as software isn't physical.
Leaving the US market... what?
OK, here is the list of the 10 countries with the highest GDP:
1.Qatar
2.Luxembourg
3.Singapore
4.Norway
5.Brunei
6.United States
7.United Arab Emirates
8.Switzerland
9.Netherlands
10.Austria
The US is has the sixth highest GDP. That is a BIG market. Plus, Mojang has already sold games to US customers. So they have US fans, cutting off part of a customer base is a STUPID idea.
Except that it was Zenimax (Bethseda's parent company) that took Mojang to court, and that they were wrong for it. Does ANYBODY do proper research on Mojang?
While on the surface you may be correct that you need to file a lawsuit in order to enforce patents, and in obvious cases of infringement it is something you should do, as a matter of practice most companies with a patent portfolio don't do that.
There is a concept called a defensive patent, where you basically patent every technology related to the industry that you can think up for the express purpose of burning the other guy. In other words, as soon as some competitor decides to take you to the cleaners over a patent infringement, you find a dozen or more patents that they have infringed upon of yours and turn the tables to make the former plaintiff into a defendant in a patent lawsuit. What usually happens is that both parties sit down and settle out of court doing a "cross licensing" scheme where they agree to license each other's patents so both companies are legit.
This kind of behavior is something I think is still scummy though because it keeps new companies from being able to enter the industry as the new company doesn't have any patents to fight that kind of collusion to restrain trade. Still that isn't a patent troll.
What makes Uniloc a patent troll is that they produce nothing other than legal briefs. If they actually produced a product, had more engineers than lawyers working for them and had factories or at least customers buying their engineering services, they might be a company worth considering as honorable. Instead, since they have more lawyers than engineers (I'm not sure they even have any engineers at all) and don't produce any useful product, that is what makes them patent trolls. Since they don't produce anything useful and don't engage in any actual engineering, they don't violate any other patents and thus can't get caught up in the cross-licensing schemes to more or less nullify the more harmful effects of patent infringement.
I don't know about the company you work for, but if your company produces actual products and has actual engineers making things, they aren't a patent troll.
You might want to look at that chart again and see what it says. The number you are quoting is the per capita (per person) GDP, where I'd agree that the USA is likely number six.
If you also consider though that the USA has more than 300 million people living in it though, its GDP then becomes the largest in the world (or ranking with the European Union as a whole if you treat that entity as a nation). The other countries ranking above on your list are very small countries, at least have a low population. Norway or Luxembourg have a population that is about the same as a small state in America. Luxembourg in particular has about the same population as Wyoming, and Norway has about the same population as Colorado.
Notch saying goodbye to the USA is abandoning a major market for his products that simply couldn't be made up by trying to sell to the rest of the world. I promise you that those countries that are listed higher on this list have much smaller economies than that of the USA. That the individual citizens of those countries might be wealthier than an average citizens in America is true, but that isn't what I'm asserting.
You can also check out this list for a full GDP comparison that compares countries rather than the per capita economies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29
Thanks for the twitter links. That is at least adding something positive to the conversation on this thread and is useful to know.
In terms of why there are software patents, the thing is that any piece of software can be made into an actual physical electronic circuit, thus it becomes eligible for patent protection. It is sort of obscure but the gist of the deal is that if software patents are thrown out as something you can't patent, you also throw out most digital electronic circuits as something which can't be patented as well. That is the back door that got the U.S. court system to recognize software patents, because a physical and tangible device could in theory be made out of that software idea.
The problem with this Uniloc patent is not the fact it is a software patent (pretty scummy I might add and a problem), but rather the overly broad description of what is being claimed as infringement. Generally most patents cover very narrow set of claims that distinguishes the invention from other inventions. What makes some of the patents granted in the 1990's very nasty is that few software patents were granted previously (the USPTO wouldn't even take them earlier) so you could (and some people did) patent concepts that were very common in the industry but weren't rejected because of a lack of prior art as contained in the database of prior patents. The head of the USPTO was even on record in the 1990's as saying he didn't mind that patents were being issued for common concepts, as even invalid patents would thus be added to the patent database.