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Minecraft Creator Facing Patent Lawsuit
The creator of Minecraft, Markus "Notch" Persson, is facing a patent lawsuit, but he doesn't seem to mind too much.
You can see his initial tweet about the lawsuit in the image above.The gist of the lawsuit is that the company Uniloc is suing Mojang over the unauthorized use of patent #6,857,067 which is a "system and method for preventing unauthorized access to electronic data." In the paperwork sent to Persson, his game is erroneously referred to as Mindcraft, because Uniloc clearly did its research. Persson tweeted a link to the full document sent to him by Uniloc, which you can check out here.
After Persson's first two tweets he followed up saying, "Unfortunately for them, they're suing us over a software patent. If needed, I will throw piles of money at making sure they don't get a cent," and, "Software patents are plain evil. Innovation within software is basically free, and it's growing incredibly rapid. Patents only slow it down."
I don't know if Uniloc is completely aware of who it's messing with.
It's unrelated to Minecraft (and video games in general) but for a very entertaining and highly educational exposé on just how absolutely absurd patent law and its affiliated lawsuits can get, I recommend this episode of the This American Life podcast. You will gain a better understanding on why Persson thinks patents are plain evil.
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