I looked up the said patent info and it shows Edelman; Martin S as the inventor not the "Uniloc" company. so Fail.. here is a link to the patent for anyone interested
Ok, so reading through the suit, and the patent ... something something portable licensing medium something something smart card something something authenticate license. I have come to the conclusion that it has to do with Minecraft PE, being sold on Android OS phones. Therefore, shouldn't it be Google Play (formerly known as Android Market) that have the problem ? Mojang only developed the software, and it is provided by Google Play. Don't Google Play do the authenticating ?
How can this be even a real lawsuit, they ****ing misspelled the name of the game Minecraft on 3rd page, writing it as "Mindcraft". What does this company of assholes want, if they misspell a name of the game which they are law suiting Mojang for, seems like a bunch of ******** idiots which want to get easy money for being dicks.
How can this be even a real lawsuit, they ****ing misspelled the name of the game Minecraft on 3rd page, writing it as "Mindcraft". What does this company of assholes want, if they misspell a name of the game which they are law suiting Mojang for, seems like a bunch of ******** idiots which want to get easy money for being dicks.
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*.
Did you just confuse china and japan? That is bad, really bad.
@everyone: Please calm down. There is no need to get violent in any way. Stop trolling Ric Richardson, stop trolling at all. Minecraft is a game of creativity. Create minecraft figures or create a meme - do something intellectual! Think of something funny, instead of babbling all about the same typo. The typo may show, that uniloc has no specific interest in mojangs so called infringement, but only in money. Which is obviously nothing new.
I did not confuse China and Japan. It happens in both countries.
That's the thing, They did! If you observe a spell check of Minecraft, one of the options I have seen before is "Mindcraft".
Even though this entire thing is a load of crap. You do have to know and respect that as fans, we are not allowed into the courtroom. We can hope and cheer, but not assist.
That does raise a thought, what if the jury has people who play Minecraft?
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...
I have an idea: Let's find a way to open a portal to Minecraft, use a mind-control mod to control an army of creepers, and send 'em to Uniloc's headquarters. Or better, release the Ender Dragon.
Idea #2: Get Godzilla Jr from the animated show Godzilla the Series and have him rip stuff apart.
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I went through the Lawsuit PDF, and it doesn't look like Mojang is going to win this one, unfortunately Uniloc or whatever it's called has rather strong case of copyright infringement unlike Bethesda. Bethesda wanted to stay on the safe side because the own the the copyrighted title "The Elder Scrolls" and Mojang creating a game called "Scrolls" does Infingement the copyright, but Bethesda wasn't attacking Mojang, they were protecting themselves from future situations I.E. a company creates a series called "The Elder Trolls", if Mojang had allowed a game called scrolls to go unrecognized, the company that created "The Elder Trolls" would a have an extremely strong case to defend themselves against Bethesda, when they would sue. . I wish the best for Mojang and Notch, they are going to need it unlike the Bethesda Lawsuit involving scrolls.
Wait, so Uniloc owns the *Idea* of having software that needs to contact a server to determine if a copy of software is legal or not?
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.
Mindcraft, does it mean that it will nullify the case eventually?
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?
im not trying to be the bad guy but if this is saying what i believe its saying. (the pdf) its saying that game makers dont have permission to sell their products using the cell towers provided in texas. if this is true, then maybe, just maybe, these TEXANS have something going for them. except, its STUPID. but hey, if no one signed papers its on them. (yet i say again, stupid) im sorry markuss but your poket edition android app may have gotten you sued just because you didnt sign a paper stating that your game can be sent to phones through DATA PLANS. god, **** texas
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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*).
Mindcraft, does it mean that it will nullify the case eventually?
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.
http://patft.uspto.g...RS=PN/6,857,067
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Curse PremiumSomeone 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.
I just took the Minecraft Noob test! Check out what I scored. Think you can beat me?!
To take the test, check out
https://minecraftnoobtest.com/test.php
Don't click this link, HE is haunting it...
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.
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