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Minecraft developer Mojang has been served a cease and desist letter from US mini golf chain Putt-Putt regarding user-created levels using the likeness of the company’s courses.
VG247 reports that Minecraft creator and Mojang founder Markus ‘Notch’ Persson took to Twitter to post an image of the letter, adding that the company was being silly.”
It has recently come to our attention that Mojang AB has been using, without authorization our famous Putt-Putt trademarks in connection with your business,” the letter reads.
We feel that Mojang AB’s use of of the Putt-Putt name has benefited Mojang AB to the detriment of Putt-Putt.”
The company requests Mojang refrain from using Putt-Putt’s logos and designs, but seeing as the levels are user-created, it’s not actually Mojang who is abusing” the brand.
That said, Mojang could potentially be held liable for providing players the tools needed to make the levels in question under Contributory Liability law – which seeks to block out those who enable copyright infringement.
That would only fly in court, however, if Putt-Putt is able to prove Minecraft launched the levels in an incomplete state, and that it encouraged players to fix it themselves. That would seem like a bit of a stretch, but that’s what it could come down to if the situation turns messy.
Don Mattrick received a copy of the letter as well, apparently over the Xbox 360 version of the game and his former affiliation with the console. Since he’s now at Zynga, one would assume he jetted over and dropped it off at Microsoft’s front gate.
