> 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.
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.