Mojang, developer for a little game known as Minecraft, has been threatened with a lawsuit yet again. No, it's not over a potential name for a future game, but for patent infringement, something potentially more serious than squabbling over scrolls.
Technology firm Uniloc has claimed that Mojang infringed on their mobile licensing system patent with Mojang's Android release of Minecraft. More specificially, it's Minecraft's mobile system check with the Mojang servers to ensure that the Android edition of Minecraft is licensed and not pirated. Uniloc has sued over this patent before with Electronic Arts, which settled out of court.
Mojang founder, Markus "Notch" Persson, publicly lashed out on his blog, saying that software patents are usually grounds for lawsuits even if the alleged infringer came up with the idea independently from the patent. "Trivial patents, such as for software, are counterproductive. If you own a software patent, you should feel bad," he said.
Unless Uniloc can really prove some purposeful patent infringement, they may only see attorneys' fees and court costs from this lawsuit, as Notch said from his Twitter account that he is willing to pile on the court costs just to make sure Uniloc doesn't see a dime. Don't expect this one to go away anytime soon, folks.
