The Electronic Frontier Foundation has gotten a $500,000 donation from Markus Persson, the creator of Minecraft, and Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks. The donation is going to be used to hire attorneys as the EFF pushes to reform the entire software patent system.

Cuban's $250,000 will go to pay for EFF Staff Attorney Julie Samuels's new position that will be called "The Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents." Persson's $250,000 isn't quite as earmarked as Cuban's, and will contribute to the EFF as a whole.

"Temporary fixes aren't good enough - we need deep and meaningful reform to protect software development and keep it as free and democratic as possible," Persson said in a statement. "New games and other technological tools come from improving on old things and making them better - an iterative process that the current patent environment could shut down entirely."

Cuban's said in a statement: "The current state of patents and patent litigation in this country is shameful. Silly patent lawsuits force prices to go up while competition and innovation suffer." and "It's time to fix our broken system, and EFF can help."