The copyright infringement battles that have been raging over LittleBigPlanet just took an interesting new turn. We’ve all heard about Media Molecule’s rather ruthless methods in making sure that none of LBP’s user created, publicly distributed levels have a motif that represents or imitates an existing IP.

However, according to an interview IGN conducted with the founders of Media Molecule, not every company wants levels based on their IPs to be erased. Some are beginning to realize that there are potential benefits to having their property publicized and enshrined in a popular game.

"But then there’s been these two mad positives; one was the high quality of the levels, including the infringing ones," said Alex Evans, co-founder and CEO of Media Molecule. "The other point is the number of IP owners who came up to us and said please whitelist us – we’ll never ever ask you to pull infringing stuff. I can’t say who that is, but those two things really shocked me, I think it shocked [the IP holders], who were like, hang on, my IP’s being represented and it’s being represented really well."

Clearly some companies have decided not to act rashly in pulling their content from the LittleBigPlanet servers. Some are actually seeing a benefit in it. Kareem Ettouney, who was also interviewed in the piece said that he believes keeping these levels available is important not just for business purposes and advertising, but also for the purpose of creating an exchange of creative thought.

"The numbers are amazing, and we’ve got a system so that when IP holders get upset about anything we address it, but one thing about copyrights and IPS, there’s a dark side to it but there’s a completely awesome side to it," said Ettouney. "It’s like hip hop being completely about refactoring, and about classic art refactoring ancient art. And there’s an inevitable sort of relationship between creative minds that one must never try to kill."

Hopefully, in the future we’ll see more companies relaxing a bit when it comes to being emulated by LittleBigPlanet users. Some have obviously seen potential benefit to the process, and as Ettouney said, the more important issue comes when making sure that we are allowing ourselves a flow of ideas between artists.