I kinda feel like this guy is overstating his contribution to Minecraft. It's nice to have an end screen message, but that isn't what drove the value of the game and could have easily been replaced by something else.
Rule #1 of getting paid for your work is don't do a bunch of work without signing a contract first. Even if you're an artist. I highly doubt he could have released that poem on his own and turned it into millions of dollars or whatever he thinks a "fair" contribution is.
Contributing an asset doesn't give you any entitlement to share in the company. If you want some equity in the company you better ask for it up front, because they probably won't give it to you and would just hire someone else and you can save your hard work. 20k seems fair and helped the author out a lot at the time. Posting a long rant about it probably hurts his future work opportunities.
Indeed, the odd twist in this story was that he was paid for his work. I was expecting a story about how he was still chasing his money to this day.
I'm fairly sure that no credible lawyer would give him the time of the day if he did try to get more now. He did work, he accepted money for that work and only later he thinks he's entitled to more and wants to re-negotiate.
I don't know about his jurisdiction, but here even as a layman I'm confident that doing the work and accepting the money would be seen as acceptance:
"As well as using words, a contract could be implied by conduct of the parties, for example, by jumping into a black cab and stating your destination, this conduct would be taken as an agreement that the taxi driver will take you to your destination and that you will pay a price for it."
The idea that just because there isn't a written contract that he magically retains the rights is magical thinking and I'm surprised that no-one he's previously told this story to has pointed that out to him.
If it were so cut and dry they wouldn't have chased his signature years later before the acquisition. A lawyer told them to do that.
I think it's more interesting of a legal case than you give it credit for. He isn't denying he was paid for his time but that the rights for the finished work are still ambiguous.
If the chance of a legal case going against Microsoft is 0.1% (e.g. his case is really bad), the estimated damages in such a case are enormous (I have no idea what they would be, but e.g. a tiny payment for every copy of Minecraft would be an enormous sum), and the cost of sending him an email is a couple of hundred dollars worth of legal counsel, then why wouldn't they chase him for a signature?
> a contract could be implied by conduct of the parties
There are other cases, though, where the courts have declined to imply transfer of copyright or license - even with a written contract - when it hasn't been explicitly specified.
> The idea that just because there isn't a written contract that he magically retains the rights is magical thinking
IANAL, obvs., but I think the situation would be "the implied contract would imply a license to use the poem but not transfer of copyright" - the key point would be whether that license was "perpetual, exclusive" to Mojang. If not perpetual, he could revoke it at any time and Microsoft will then have a copyright problem for any copy sold after that point. If exclusive, the license may not have transferred to Microsoft in which case they have an extremely large problem given the number of copies sold since the buyout.
> Microsoft bought Mojang not specific property of Mojang.
[1] says "When licences are acquired as part of an asset transaction, the contracts are taken over. In that case, the selling and buying parties need the cooperation of the licensor. This cooperation can take place before or possibly after the takeover. If the licence is not transferable, there will in principle not be a legally valid transfer unless the IP right holder in question gives his consent to the transfer of the licence."
Do you have a link to suggest that these definitely-are-lawyers are wrong in this interpretation?
I don't think there's any doubt that Mojang / Microsoft are entitled to use his work. But I don't think it's clear whether he has the rights to the work or not.
> But I don't think it's clear whether he has the rights to the work or not.
He owns the copyright, hasn't transferred the copyright, he clearly owns the rights in the work.
> I don't think there's any doubt that Mojang / Microsoft are entitled to use his work.
I think you're right that there's an implied license for them to use it but the scope of that license was never specified and I'd guess a clever lawyer could make reasonable hay from the case that it's now much broader than he wanted.
Can you quote the bit of the article which says that? All I can see is that he said "ok, what's your offer?", Carl returned with "€20k", and "in all the confusion someone sent me the money, even though we still didn’t have a contract worked out" - no contract, no license.
“and so I said, OK, I’ll take whatever the first thing you offered was.”
Edit: I’m rate limited, but Microsoft doesn’t need a transfer. They bought the entire company. Just like you buying some shares on the stock exchange, except they bought all of the shares in a private transaction. Had they done an asset purchase instead, your point might be valid.
Which is an implied contract, yes. Which a court would probably find that Mojang have an implied license to use the poem, yes.
But the terms of that license are unknown - a court may well decide that it did not apply to Microsoft since he didn't sign that contract. And it also means that he did not assign copyright to Mojang or Microsoft which removes that avenue of them claiming they can use it for free.
Ready his comment again. It does not matter because Mojang still exists, it's just a Microsoft-owned company now. The contract and everything else related to the game is still property of Mojang, nothing has been transferred.
A court may well consider that becoming a wholly owned subsidiary would violate a license, despite being a distinct legal entity[1][2]. Especially when it's just an implied license with no actual agreed definition on both sides.
[1] Which is similar to what we're seeing with ARM vs Qualcomm and it should be interesting to see how that shakes out.
You’ve linked an article about a doctrine specific to patent law. Does not apply here. Also, it only speculates that it might be in issue in an acquisition of a subsidiary (vs. a direct merger).
So? He let them use it in the game in exchange for $20k. That’s all they want or need. And before you start with this tiresome license transfer crap, please take a second to read this whole thread to see why that’s not relevant.
The question is whether Microsoft owns the copyright or merely has permission to use it as the ending for their game. Everyone agrees Microsoft is allowed to use it as the ending to Minecraft, but it doesn't seem like Microsoft owns the copyright to it or the right to use it somewhere else.
Also, Mojang is in breach of the informal contract because they did not give him the promotion they promised.
20k does indeed seem fair - for the value of Minecraft at that moment in time.
And that's the kicker - his agent could have negotiated 100k, which would have been more than fair for that moment in time. But still be wayyy underpaid for eventually what the game would sell for.
But of course, it's not about money. I understand his point - and I wish I could find it now, but I can't, so I'll just describe it.
I saw some meme a while back with a kid sitting next to and hugging a giant frog. The text read, "Beware, the people you love don't always love you back". The second panel showed the frog swallowing the child. I've certainly had these sort of one-sided friendships, and periodically reflect on them. It sucks. It's probably worse if you're a very emotionally deep person (which writers and other artists frequently are), but I still understood well what he was talking about.
Rule #1 of getting paid for your work is don't do a bunch of work without signing a contract first. Even if you're an artist. I highly doubt he could have released that poem on his own and turned it into millions of dollars or whatever he thinks a "fair" contribution is.
Contributing an asset doesn't give you any entitlement to share in the company. If you want some equity in the company you better ask for it up front, because they probably won't give it to you and would just hire someone else and you can save your hard work. 20k seems fair and helped the author out a lot at the time. Posting a long rant about it probably hurts his future work opportunities.