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.'"

Comments

I hope..

[JustNiz]

He pounds the troll into the ground then sues them for damages, defamation and costs.

Re:I hope..

[Cryacin]

Good to see that someone truly understands the prisoner's dillemma. On the whole in society, it's best to always choose what's best for everyone and not best for you, but if you come across a group like this, it makes perfect sense to single them out and punish them. I really wish more corporates, companies and people did this. It would really help to diminish the amount of successful selfish people in the world.

Re:I hope..

[Anonymous Coward]

Your delusion seems to be thinking patents and invention are related in any way except insofar as the former prevents the latter. Patents are a mechanism for stealing from people who actually make things and giving it to lawyers.

Re:I hope..

[Afecks]

Good to see that someone truly understands the prisoner's dillemma.

Life is not prisoner's dilemma. It's iterated prisoner's dilemma because people can actually build up reputations. It's been shown that the best stable strategy is tit-for-tat plus forgiveness.

Re:I hope..

[GumphMaster]

Whether you like it or not, patents have been around for over a couple hundred years. No matter how much moaning and groaning people do about patents (particularly software patents), they aren't going away anytime soon.

Nobody is being revisionist and claiming that patents have not existed for hundreds of years, although you'd be hard put to claim software patents have. Longevity, of itself, does not make them inherently valuable or suited to today. The "it's always been that way" perspective also fails to allow for the possibility that evolution of elements of patent law over that time has produced aspects that are neither valuable nor desirable. If people do not exercise a little of their right to "moaning and groaning" then the situation absolutely will not change in their interest, only those of others. If you do not wish to moan, fine, but do not expect everyone else to accept your fatalist position.

Lawyers get paid the big bucks when somebody tries to fight a losing battle.

In any battle one side will be fighting the losing battle, ergo the lawyers always get paid the big bucks. The even get paid when people opt not to fight the battle because then the victims has to acquiesce to whatever is demanded of them by the lawyers.

Re:I hope..

[Lisias]

You see, large corporations with deep pockets are easier: all you have to do is to make sure it's cheaper for them to pay than to sue. They *always* go for the cheap solution.

(one of them hired you, didn't? - ok, bad joke. but you asked for it!)

Little enterprises, when facing the financial death, can choose to bite back. They're dead anyway, they can afford to try their luck on a trial. It appears that 50 on every 75 ones that are sued by Uniloc choose that path.

Uniloc has sued 73 companies over violating its patent. 25 of those companies have settled according to Uniloc. [7]
Uniloc sued Microsoft in 2003 for violating its patent relating to technology designed to deter software piracy. In 2006, US District Judge William Smith ruled in favour of Microsoft, but an appeals court overturned his decision, saying there was a "genuine issue of material fact" and that he should not have ruled on the case without hearing from a jury.[8] On April 8, 2009 a Rhode Island jury found Microsoft had violated the patent and told Microsoft to pay Uniloc $388 million in damages.[9] After this success, Uniloc filed new patent infringement suits against Sony America, McAfee, Activision, Quark, Borland Softward and Aspyr Media.[10]

The decision against Microsoft was subsequently overturned on September 29, 2009 when Judge Smith "vacated" the jury's verdict and ruled in favour of Microsoft again, saying the jury "lacked a grasp of the issues before it and reached a finding without a legally sufficient basis".[11] Uniloc appealed the judge's decision, alleging bias and in 2011 the guilty verdict was reinstated against Microsoft. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said that instead of using the usual "25 per cent rule", the damage awards for infringement would need to be recalculated.[12]

On July 20, 2012, Uniloc filed a lawsuit against Mojang, citing the Minecraft Pocket Edition, incorrectly called "Mindcraft" within the lawsuit documents, as an infringement upon patents that give Uniloc exclusive rights to license checks on Android cellular phones.[13] The same lawsuit was also filed against Electronic Arts, citing Bejewelled2 as an infringement upon their patents on Android devices.[14]

Source

Re:I hope..

[Genda]

I can't even begin to tell how many ways this comment is a brain fart, but here are some of the high points;

1. Get your facts straight, the oldest U.S. patent is from 1790, but that only because of the age of the U.S. central government. The oldest patent in North America goes back to 1641 and there are Greek writings of registered disclosure of invention going back to about 500 B.C., so yes, patents have been here for a wee bit.

2. Nobody said get rid of patents. At least in this culture, the original purpose of patents was to spur invention by protecting an inventors rights to his own creation for some fair period of time, allowing to benefit from his creativity and productivity. These laws were instrumental to the explosion of ideas and technologies that made the United States an industrial and economic force in the 19th century.

3. Since then, the patent has been hijacked to build ever larger and higher fortifications from which to control greater bodies of IP, and the free flow of ideas and invention. Existing patent law is antithetical to its original purpose and is becoming an increasing impediment to invention, innovation and technological advance.

4. Therefore, when extremely bright, articulate and educated people discuss the dilemmas facing society and speculate on possible solutions that address the needs and wants of corporate America vs. the needs and wants of the human race, you might want to refrain from painting everyone with the idiot brush. The only one who actually ends up looking stupid is the guy holding the brush.

5. Microsoft paying the patent trolls with what amounts to folding money for Bill Gates, functions out of simple expedience, its easier feeding the trolls than spending ten times as much on the court costs. The trolls only ask for what they know they can get way with... think of mosquitoes.

6. Minecraft may or may not have a superb chance of wining their case, the point here is that they will not be bullied or threatened by a blood sucking parasite, and I for one hope the troll get's it head stomp.

I don't know if you get any of this, it may be beyond you. There is a time when the right thing transcends the easy thing, I applaud the makers of Minecraft for doing the right thing, and I would love to see permanent changes written to the body of patent law to remove the growing flood of idiot patents plaguing society.

Re:I hope..

[hairyfeet]

The problem with that suggestion is this: Depending on the company even if you win...you'll lose.

I had a friend that was running a little ISP that was basically railroaded by one of the bigger carriers. It was obviously an antitrust slam dunk, not to mention they had ignored the contracts they had signed as well as making sure nobody else would deal with his little company. So why isn't my friend sitting on a beach enjoying his victory? Because his lawyer said "Oh there isn't a doubt in my mind you'll win, none at all, but it'll cost you a good million and a half and 10 years of your life to get to the end" so needless to say since my friend didn't have a million and a half nor 10 years of his life he wished to through away in court he walked away.

Look at how long it took to finally end the SCO mess, and that case was so damned obvious Ray Charles could have seen that SCO was full of shit. The reason that many settle is that unless you have nothing better to do with years of your life, not to mention great piles of money to piss away, its simply smarter to make it go away.

Think about it, this guy is just a little developer....how many more games is he NOT gonna put out and NOT gonna get the money from, because he's too tied up in court bullshit to be working on games? Now do i think that is right? Fuck no, I think the system stinks. But what the system IS and what it OUGHT to be are sadly two different things and as it is this guy will in all likelihood lose a ton of money he'll never see again even if he wins. Lets face it friend, if they lose they'll just fold and start up a new firm doing the same shit tomorrow while this guy won't see a cent.

Re:I hope..

[Megane]

And if that doesn't work, he can build a house and stay in it until sunrise.

Re:I hope..

[StillAnonymous]

I disagree due to the fact that people can reverse engineer almost anything, making most trade secrets useless. If someone figures out your trade secret, you're hooped, that's all. If you have a patent though, even if someone else doesn't know about it and comes up with their implementation on their own, you still get to sue them. The patent lottery continues.

Have you read a recent patent? It's a joke. Deliberately unreadably-lawyeresque writing style, extremely vague so that they can sue anybody who implements anything even remotely similar (ie. patenting an idea, which is something you're specifically NOT supposed to be able to do), and becoming frequently more and more obvious within the realm the cover. Slip your patent in, then sue anybody who becomes profitable using a similar idea in a product. If you're lucky, they'll setting for millions and you won't even have to go to court.

Fuck this broken system. It's been gamed to death by filthy, parasitic scum. I seriously hope these patent trolls get crushed hard. I doubt it though. The system is so bought off and corrupt, real justice is as rare as rocking-horse shit.

Re:I hope..

[Swampash]

Uniloc is basically one guy, Ric Richardson, who is the epitome of the borderline-Aspergers nerd type idolised on Slashdot. He works out of a van because an office is too distracting.

http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/business-it/aussie-inventor-settles-with-microsoft-in-patent-dispute-20120315-1v5zc.html

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/biz-tech/one-man-v-microsoft-a-day-in-the-dickmobile-another-day-in-court-for-aussie-inventor-20110106-19h25.html

He sued Microsoft for infringing this patent, and Microsoft lost to the tune of $388 million in damages.

Re:I hope..

[blind biker]

Life is not prisoner's dilemma. It's iterated prisoner's dilemma because people can actually build up reputations. It's been shown that the best stable strategy is tit-for-tat plus forgiveness.

Do you have a reference? I would be super-thankful.

Re:I hope..

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this why the fashion industry is thriving despite the fact that they have 0 patent protection?

Imagine if someone patented knitting? Practically everyone that wanted to make their own clothes would have to pay royalties!

Re:I hope..

[julesh]

And I disagree again due the fact that I can hack any hardware I own, but I can be (theoretically) prosecuted if I do reverse engineering on a software.

Come to the EU. We have legally-mandated rights to reverse engineer for the purpose of implementing interoperable systems.

Re:I hope..

[TechnoCore]

Life is not prisoner's dilemma. It's iterated prisoner's dilemma because people can actually build up reputations. It's been shown that the best stable strategy is tit-for-tat plus forgiveness.

Do you have a reference? I would be super-thankful.

I think he might be referring to this where Richard Dawkins explains it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48EWLj3gIJ8

Re:I hope..

[Lisias]

Unfortunately, I found such source:

But, just this week, Richardson was informed of the outcome of the appeal, which reinstated Microsoft's guilty verdict.

Source

Special attention for the "DickMobile". :-)

Re:I hope..

[Talence]

You have a very valid argument, but there's one aspect that's missing: just like with old-fashioned racketeering, it's not a one-time expense: fold to one patent troll and you'll have to fold to all.

The SCO case was different: it was basically a Microsoft vs. Linux fight by proxy that SCO could not have funded on its own.

This patent troll is more likely to go for the low-hanging fruit, so it seems smarter for him to not make himself an attractive target.

Re:I hope..

[Admiral Burrito]

You have a very valid argument, but there's one aspect that's missing: just like with old-fashioned racketeering, it's not a one-time expense: fold to one patent troll and you'll have to fold to all.

It's much worse than that. Defeating a patent troll doesn't create any sort of immunity against others. Even doing what you are ostensibly supposed to do - license every patent you need to - is no guarantee that someone else won't come along with another patent and shut you down.

Software patents are thousands of swords of Damocles hanging over the heads of every software developer. The idea that this somehow encourages innovation is complete and utter bullshit, shovelled by those who own the swords.

Re:I hope..

[PhrstBrn]

Put your Minecraft fanboyism aside, Mojang isn't even at 100m USD in revenue yet. The guy himself may be 'hideously rich' but the company isn't some juggernaut.

They definitely have over 100 million in revenue now. Minecraft has built 80 million in sales since March

The XBox 360 version came out in May, and has sold over 3 million units. The Xbox 360 version costs $20 USD (1600 MS Points). Simple arithmetic gives me $60 million in XBLA sales. Mojang gets at least 1/3rd of that, which is enough too push them over the $100 million mark.

Re:I hope..

[Teancum]

2. This isn't quite right. The primary purpose of patents is to encourage the publication of inventions and sharing of ideas. Without them, the profit motive would encourage trade secrets and hoarding of information and techniques. Say what you will about patents, obviousness, and longevity of protections, but they have succeeded brilliantly at getting everyone publishing everything in extensive detail.

If that is the goal of patents, it has become an utterly failed goal and the role of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office certainly has not encouraged any actual documentation of the devices or concepts themselves. Sadly, I've read enough patent applications to realize that there is no possible way to glean much of any information at all from those documents in terms of being able to actually build the devices or concepts being described in them. Those applications are so full of legal descriptions that gleaning any technical data on how to do something simply can't be done.

I'll also note that if patents were so excellent as a means to share and distribute information about technical and engineering concepts, most engineers would have a bookshelf and likely even a full library of patent applications (especially expired patents) for them to review and to get ideas from. Instead, most engineers are explicitly encouraged to never read patent applications except in a narrow scope to help out with the legal defense of a company once they have been sued or are supposed to be giving expert legal testimony on the content of the patent. The only patent related items that you will ever see in an engineering office may be some plaques honoring employees who have been granted patents, but you would typically see lawyers who see any other patent applications or grants that belong to other companies taking those materials and throwing them into the shredder or burning them with likely a long talk to any engineer who is caught with them in a joint conference with a human resources exec, the immediate supervisor, and a lawyer along with some sort of form where that employee would have a long and embarrassing "lecture" (it wouldn't even be a conversation) and they would need to sign some paper as a condition of employment to never look at another patent application without direct approval of their supervisor.

I wish patents would work as you claim. It is a noble thought and if patents actually functioned as you claim the world would be a much better place. Sadly, they fail at the thought. The details about how to do what they claim to do is almost never there. If we had to re-create 21st century American technology out of the data base that is the USPTO patent applications, we'd still be stuck trying to figure out how to chop down a tree much less being able to build a fire or even building any of the tools that make America work today.

If you want to share information about technology, try a textbook or some technical manual. They are embarrassingly better at sharing information about technology than any patent ever could think about, and would tell a would-be engineer how to actually accomplish the task rather than the legalese which is a patent application. That by law a patent application is supposed to provide the information is irrelevant that it actually does what it claims to do.

Re:I hope..

[ultranova]

Corporations are made up of people.

No, they aren't. Corporations are legal constructs made of legal fiction. They may or may not have legal relationships - such as ownership or employment - to people, but they are not made of people.

People have rights. Those rights cannot be taken away (being inalienable and all). So, no, "corporations" don't have rights, but the people who own those corporations *do*.

And nobody's suggested taking their rights away. But tell me: if I draw a cartoon, do the characters in that cartoon have legal rights? Do I get in trouble if I draw a piano falling on them? No? Then why should any other fictitious construct - such as a corporation - have them?

In a sense, those corporations sure are people.

By your logic, Pythagora's Theorem is a person.

You want to rail against corporate abuse? Get rid of the lack of responsibilities. It's that, more than anything, that makes corporations misbehave. The problem isn't the "personhood" of the corporation, but the half-personhood.

So how do you propose throwing a corporation behind bars? The worst you can do to a corporation is give it a (usually ridiculously small) fine, and even then we get a chorus of people bitterly explaining how it'll simply pass it on to the customers (not that that's relevant for a patent troll or other nonproductive parasites).

A fictitious entity cannot be held responsible for anything because it does not exist, thus it shouldn't have rights either.

Re:I hope..

[Schmorgluck]

Now if only the USA had a Loser Pays system like just about every other country in the world. Aside from the patent system, the American rule is what enables patent trolls.

Re:I hope..

[Rhalin]

Castelfranchi & Falcone ( http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Theory-Socio-Cognitive-Computational-Technology/dp/0470028750 ) have a nice overview explaining how and why even the iterated prisoner's dillema fails to explain any real-world human behavior. They provide a nice set of additional citations to go look at as well

Re:I hope..

[TENTH SHOW JAM]

The problem is that, if a corporation does not obey the laws of the land, there is no convenient way of giving the corporation a "Time Out to think about what they have done." People are easy to train that way.

If companies were delisted people would be unable to buy and sell shares and therefor be stuck with the bad shares. The company then has to serve time by donating all profits for the next 5 years to "The public good". Now we have a system of crime and punishment that can deal with corporations in a way that corporations can understand. Nobody loses their job as the corporation can continue operating.

People would only invest in ethical companies on the grounds that unethical ones will not turn a profit.

Re:I hope..

[jo42]

Corporations are people hiding behind a legal abstraction that shields their activities from legal responsibility for their actions.

Re:I hope..

[Anonymous Coward]

I have guns, too. So long as they don't point theirs at me, I don't point mine at them.

Right on! Captain Internet Hardass!

Let's see them ...

[Spacejock]

... dig their way out of this one.

Sorry, but it had to be said.

Fuck Patent Law in America

[Anonymous Coward]

Enough of this crap. Patent and copyright trolling needs to end now!

Watch out Blizzard you're next

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

...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...

Sometimes Battle.net 2.0 is all about logging on to a server to play a singleplayer or LAN game.

Software patents are so dumb. Just because some idiot patents something obvious doesn't mean the rest of us should not be able to do the obvious thing. What if someone patented walking in a straight line? The rest of society would be relegated to drinking heavily, or inventing silly walks.

Re:Watch out Blizzard you're next

[professionalfurryele]

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.

Not just Minecraft

[ildon]

They're also suing Square Enix, EA, and Gameloft (basically everyone).

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/365540/20120721/minecraft-notch-mojang-lawsuit-patent-troll-software.htm

Re:Not just Minecraft

[Ouchie]

Is it possible to use Class Action for defense?

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.

Re:Not just Minecraft

[ArchieBunker]

Honestly it would be cheaper to just put a hit on the guy doing all the lawsuits.

Re:Not just Minecraft

[Ronin441]

But in the case where they're suing many different people, it might not be cheaper for any one party to pay for the hit.

What we need is a way to crowdfund assassination of patent trolls.

Hitstarter.

Re:Not just Minecraft

[Tom]

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.

Re:Not just Minecraft

[julesh]

Is it possible to use Class Action for defense?

Yes, or at least you can achieve something similar. It may or may not be possible in this case, but it is always worth putting an application to the judge of your case to see whether he thinks it would be beneficial. The relevant rule is this one:

20. (2) Defendants. Persons—as well as a vessel, cargo, or other property subject to admiralty process in rem—may be joined in one action as defendants if:

(A) any right to relief is asserted against them jointly, severally, or in the alternative with respect to or arising out of the same transaction, occurrence, or series of transactions or occurrences; and

(B) any question of law or fact common to all defendants will arise in the action.

(B) is clearly true. (A) may or may not be, depending how one interprets "series of transactions or occurrences".

Re:Damn

[Ouchie]

I bought two more copies of Minecraft just to fund their defense.

Minetest FTW!

[VanessaE]

And this, folks is why I support open source solutions whenever possible, in this case, Minetest. It is similar to Minecraft (generally based on the same idea), but 100% open source. Coded by Perttu "celeron55" Ahola et.al. For more details, visit the main website: http://minetest.net/

(Disclaimer: I am a mod programmer and texture pack developer for the game)

Give congress a first hand look at the problem.

[D'Sphitz]

Someone should patent something ridiculous like "A method for indicating support of a proposal by using an input device to record a 'yea' or 'nay' vote." and then file suit against individual members of congress (in Tyler, TX of course). Maybe that would get their attention.

Re:Unreal Tournament 1999 Prior art

[Sigma 7]

Unreal Tournament only used CD-based copy protection, which was removed in a patch. It didn't use a licence key as described in a patent, nor did it use server-side authentication.

It's better to say that Diablo II violated the patent. Although it didn't require contacting a server, it used this system if you wanted to play on Battle.net.

And even better is Ultima Online, which was released in 1997, and was an MMORPG.

More specifically

[Anonymous Coward]

in the initial round it is best to be the nice guy, after that just mirror what the other side has done to you. Of course this assumes a closed system with an unlimited number of interactions.

So in this case one party is being negative to another and has a reputation for always doing so. The appropriate thing for Notch to do is to be as ruthless as possible within legal restrictions. It is unlikely the patent troll will have a second round with you, and will never not take the negative option. Therefore it is best to take them for all they are worth, if you can.

Amazing how common sense and game theory comes to the same conclusions given the same input.

Re:More specifically

[ultranova]

Amazing how common sense and game theory comes to the same conclusions given the same input.

It's indeed eerie. You'd almost think they were trying to model the same world.

Re:Damn

[Riceballsan]

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.

FWIW you ARE a patent troll

[Sycraft-fu]

And trying to AstroTurf Slashdot as an AC won't convince anyone otherwise.

If you weren't a patent troll you'd contact companies for licensing ahead of time, and not wait for a product to get huge, then sue.

That is the real difference in methodology. Companies with legit patents will go and try to license their patent to everyone, and only sue when people refuse to license but use the technology anyhow. Patent trolls sit quietly and wait for things to become a big success and then sue for "damages" for their patent nobody has ever heard of.

So fuck off son.

Re:FWIW you ARE a patent troll

[eWarz]

Oh and, if you are from Uniloc, I have one more thing for you: Don't fuck with minecraft and DON'T fuck with Mojang. It's one thing to harass microsoft (who basically everyone hates but deals with because there isn't a better solution), but to fuck with an indie game developer that everyone loves....that's like kicking a poor old lady in a wheel chair in times square in NYC, what the fuck do you think is going to happen here?

Speaking of Lawyers

[arthurpaliden]

Family gathering the other day and my mother in law reports with pride that my son's cousin is going into law. She then asks my son if he has ever considered going into law . Without even missing a beat he replies:

"No, my parents raised me better that that."

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

What hard work? Did you even read the patent? This guy had an idea and patented it. He built no product. He did no work. He is attempting to steal the hard work of people who actually created unique inventions and products which happened to have a (what should be considered obvious) method of verification.

Literally, the entire patent is: Take smart card (someone else's hard work), insert into smart card reader (someone else's hard work) attached to a computer (someone else's hard work) that is also attached to the internet (someone else's hard work), and communicate to server (someone else's hard work) to receive authentication (someone else's hard work) for the smart card's contents.

There is not a single part of that that is not someone else's hard work that Uniloc is leeching off of, and you have the gall to defend these asshats?