Slashdot Mirror
Patent Troll Claims Minecraft Infringement
First time accepted submitter ubrgeek writes "Popular game Minecraft has hit the big time: It's being sued for infringement by patent troll Uniloc who claims the game infringes a patent it holds on copy protection software. Developer Markus 'Notch' Persson sounds like he's up for the challenge: '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.'"
He pounds the troll into the ground then sues them for damages, defamation and costs.
It seems that some of their defendants could pound them into powder single handed but some of the smaller ones like Minecraft might benefit by pooling resources.
"Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most." ~Ozzy Osborne
It isn't just that notch has a metric ass-tonne of money, compared to most of the targets he has sued, notch is probably one of the poorest. The real reason notch can fight, is that he isn't a public company. Most publicly traded companies would rather settle and get rid of the guy, than gamble in court, pay legal fees that outweigh the costs of the settlement and still have a risk of a stupid judge thinking it is a legitimate patent.
A trend which I see these days in Slashdot is aggressive downmodding like here is happening with VanessaE.
I don't know if "Minetest" is any good, but I thought it would be interesting to talk about how introducing an open source implementation would affect the patent situation.
Start a project on github, I'm in.
It really would be a worthwhile thing to have, even as a satire, to point out just how serious the problem is. And it could easily be expanded to cover politicians for whom we seem to get "agreement ratings" all the time, but never "hate metrics", which as any student of election theory knows are just as important.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
If the patent office is overworked the solution is simple. No appeals process and a bias towards rejection. Stop this bullshit of putting in multiple claims some of which are obvious, one obvious claim means no patent, one claim with prior art means no patent. Stop this bullshit of poorly worded and vague patents. If within the first 30 minutes of getting your patent it isn't clear how to implement it, automatic rejection. Force the inclusion of pseudocode for software patents (or better yet just ban them), and the inclusion of schematics for everything else, and demands that it should be clear from those schematics how to actually build the device in question. Anyone submitting a claim to an invention with documented prior art should be fined heavily for wasting the offices time. Allow the extension of prior art to softer situations, so don't simply look at academic papers and other patents (although those should be used to determine if the submitter should be fined) but include any other reasonable source of prior art (blog postings which outline similar ideas, public speculation in the media).
Once it is clear that only geniune patents will be accepted the volume of patents submitted to the patent office will drop rapidly.
No appeals process and a bias towards rejection.
I have a friend who works in the patent office (not the software part) and he says his boss tells them to reject everything the first time then let the submitter come back and defend themselves before they make a final decisions. So I think (at least parts) of the patent office are already doing this (although maybe not the software division).