The writer of the poem, or short story, when you beat the ender dragon in Minecraft, never signed the contract releasing his copyright on it. That means Microsoft doesn't actually own the ending to Minecraft.
Microsoft probably doesn’t own the ending to Minecraft, since my non-lawyer understanding is that assignment must be done a particular way unless it is done in very specific terms as a ‘work for hire.’
However, his acceptance of the money, things written in his emails, the poem itself or other behaviors, could possibly form a case that he implicitly assigned a transferable non-exclusive license to Mojang for it to be used in MC.
(not a lawyer caveat applies)
(It looks like Irish law requires a written agreement for any non-exclusive license, but Swedish law looks a bit vague and it’s possible to assign ownership via implicit license.)
The author acknowledges that he gave implicit permission to Notch/Mojang, and goes so far as to mention that the permission only extended to the original PC version of the game (which is all that existed at the time).
> I was stunned, I didn’t understand what was happening, and so I said, OK, I’ll take whatever the first thing you offered was. The friendship is more important than the money.
I don’t think we know exactly how this offer was worded and, therefore, what the 10k euros bought.
To what extent it matters: I happen to have be quite familiar with Swedish copyright (apart from more recent changes made after the events in the article).
> but Swedish law looks a bit vague and it’s possible to assign ownership via implicit license.
It's quite clear on this part - economic rights and right to use can be assigned to others no problem like most places but creative ownership can never be renounced, explicitly or implicitly. Details below for the curious.
Copyright is divided into economic rights and moral rights/droit moral (ideell upphovsrätt).
For the most part, moral rights can not be transferred - any contract claiming to do is void. Part of moral rights is the right to attribution - this can be signed away, but only "under kind and art limited use of the work" (that is, a poem could have been explicitly signed away for e.g. use as ending in a PC game title, but I have a hard time seeing the verbiage by Carl at the time of the acquisition being valid). Also, even if there is a contract full permission of use and reassigning all economic rights, unless explicitly noted the creator would still have an enforceable perpetual right to attribution.
More interesting is the "right to respect". It gives the right of the creator to object to changes to the work, or publication in a context, which damages the artistic reputation of the creator, which according to the explanatory memorandum means "violation of the author's personality, as expressed in the work".[1]
The author may sign an agreement promising the purchaser of a work to not execute their rights towards them (like Carl's rejected contract attempted, and like OP is effectively doing further down in the post when they announce it to be public domain).
droit moral limitations/transfers need to have a limited timespan (non-perpetual) and explicit and limited scope in use.
Not sure to what extent Swedish copyright was/is relevant for the situation in the article.
When learning this in uni, the Swedish way was presented as somewhat different in the amount of protection for the creator, the limited scope under which author rights can be restricted or transferred. Wikipedia tells me that most European countries apart from the UK have somewhat similar interpretations, though.
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[1]: For example if the ending would have had a completely different twist, and adjustments made to the poem that changes its message, that could also be an issue even if the use and rights transfer was otherwise agreed upon. To give you an idea of how far this can go, a film director was awarded damages on the grounds of TV channels making inappropriate cuts for commercials when airing their movies: https://lagen.nu/dom/nja/2008s309
[2]: Related to this case: a reporter writing a news article for their employer, a local newspaper. The next day the same article was republished in another publication owned by another company, with the permission of the employer. The court held that the employer had no rights to extend the economic license to another company, and the second paper had to pay the reporter. Seems pretty clear-cut that if Swedish law were to apply, Microsoft has 0 rights wrt the economic rights of the poem and would be liable to compensate OP for past unlicensed use, up until the point of the blog post where they renounce these rights moving forward. https://lagen.nu/dom/nja/1993s390
> he implicitly assigned a transferable non-exclusive license to Mojang
This is almost correct. If this was decided in the US, his discussions and acceptance of payment gave Mojang a non-transferable license. During the sale to Microsoft, he was a stakeholder. Microsoft failed to acquire a license, which was why they were trying to force him to sign a contract with terms - of perpetual transfer - that he did not agree to. Mojang needed that signed otherwise Microsoft needed to negotiate a license or purchase from him directly. Microsoft did not do this so they don't own it nor did they have the right to distribute his work until he public-domained it. They are still guilty of infringements up to the date he public domained it, but he seems to have released he right to pursue this as part of this essay.
In some countries, commissioned work belongs to the buyer by default, even without an explicit agreement for payment and even if the buyer never pays anything. This can be a nasty surprise. Probably not applicable to him but with all those other factors, I hope he checked with a lawyer before declaring that he owns it!
However, his acceptance of the money, things written in his emails, the poem itself or other behaviors, could possibly form a case that he implicitly assigned a transferable non-exclusive license to Mojang for it to be used in MC. (not a lawyer caveat applies)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implied_license
(It looks like Irish law requires a written agreement for any non-exclusive license, but Swedish law looks a bit vague and it’s possible to assign ownership via implicit license.)