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Comments: 261 +- Games: Worlds.com Sues NCSoft Over MMO-Patent on Monday December 29 2008, @08:38PM
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Lulfas writes "Worlds.com today sued NCSoft over its patent on a scalable virtual world, filed in 2000 and granted this February. This is a very broad base patent, and there is no reason to expect they will only sue NCSoft, when they should be able to use the same patent against other companies. 'Specifically, the suit claims that NCsoft has infringed on patent 7,181,690, "System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space" through its games, including City of Heroes, City of Villains, Dungeon Runners, Exteel, Guild Wars, Lineage, Lineage II, and Tabula Rasa.'"
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Prior Art? (Score:5, Insightful)
Filed in 2000? Um...shouldn't be too hard to show prior art to overturn it if the patent indeed is applicable to operating MMOs. UO and EQ for sure...probably even text-based MUDs.
Re:Prior Art? (Score:4, Informative)
Even some of NCSoft games are prior art to that.
But the issue is a bit irrelevant due to the fact that as stated before elsewhere VRML existed way before it.
Also "World" is a fictional MMORPG anime series and fully trademarked...
Also.. shockwave dates from 2000, and i'm sure Macromedia/Adobe will have tons of patents related with them.
*drumrolls*
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That's not "irrelevant" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Prior Art? (Score:4, Informative)
Well, they filed an almost identical patent [google.com] in 1994, which shows slightly more forethought on their part. But still, I played GCP in the mid-eighties [atarimagazines.com] which covers most, if not all, of the claims.
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Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Drat. 1994 should have been 1996.
Prior art from 1979 (Score:3, Informative)
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NCSoft might consider that the patent at hand has a terminal disclaimer filed in it referring to the patent you mentioned. While the new patent has only been issued for a year and change, one might wonder whether the doctrine of laches would apply since the PTO decided that one of the old and new patents is obvious over the other, and the patent holder neglected to sue on the basis of the older patent for 12 years or so.
Also, I think MUDs read on at least some of the claims, and at least some of the others
EQ might be better than UO for this one. . . (Score:5, Informative)
If you look at the link to the actual patent, and begin reading the claims, this does not apply to the (original version of) Ultima Online, or to text muds, because the patent specifically describes a 3-dimensional graphical world as being part of the claims. UO is (or at least was, last time I played it around 2001 or 2002) 2-dimensional. Right about the time I was leaving, they introduced an expansion called Third-Dawn, which still didn't make the world truly 3D, but it did make player avatars and monsters 3D, IIRC.
EQ, as I recall, was true 3D (I only played a trial account for like 10 days once, so my memories are rather vague), so it might be a good candidate for prior art.
It should be noted that the patent does not appear to cover (I don't know for sure; I'm not a lawyer), the idea of a 3D MMO, per se, but rather a few necessary client rendering techniques (which, in reality, almost any 3D MMO would be likely to employ) for determining what other users' avatars should be displayed by the client. It appears the idea they are trying to patent is that, in a 3D world, when you turn the camera to look a given direction, you should only see some avatars, and not others (that is, only the ones in your field of view). Additionally, if there are a lot of avatars, this patent claims protection for the idea that the client can implement a maximum number of avatars to display, and to use the knowledge of the maximum number to display, combined with the position information, to determine some subset of the avatars to display (presumably the X nearest avatars, where X is the maximum number to display, though the patent doesn't specify this explicitly).
I'd be shocked if EQ and Meridian59 didn't both do these things several years before this patent app was filed.
I'd also like to point out, that the patent doesn't specify 'camera orientation' or 'client view orientation' (even though that appears to be what they are trying to cover), but rather 'avatar orientation' (which suggests to me that this patent would only apply to MMOGs where the camera orientation is locked to the avatar orientation). Based on my 3+ years of playing CoH, I can tell you that the CoH client doesn't determine which other avatars to show on screen based on the orientation of my avatar - I can spin the camera freely to point in any direction, even look completely backwards from the direction my avatar is facing, so I suspect that NCSoft could claim that as a defense, if they had to.
Also, I think they could, maybe, make a defense against claim 6 (I'm not sure though):
Now, I could be wrong here, but I thought most client/server 3D game protocols do *not* have the clients transmit the position of the avatar to the server, which is part (b)? Don't the servers already know the position of the avatar, and the clients just send a vector, that is, a request to move a certain number of units in a particular direction, at which point the server calculates a new position from the original posti
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Re:EQ might be better than UO for this one. . . (Score:4, Insightful)
I've seen several parts of the patent that are not applicable to certain games or have prior art.
Article 4 about determining the subset of avatars to display would absolutely not apply to Dungeon Runners or Guild Wars, which are instanced. I can't remember how Dungeon Runners did towns (I played it all of 2 hours), but GW has district maximums to never overload towns and thus never needs to use nearness to display avatars.
Patent filing is 2000, NCSoft's own Lineage was released in 1998 and is 2D (Lineage II was 2003 and true 3D).
The Realm and Meridian 59 both were true 3D and predate this patent. Several other non MMORPGs that were also 3D and had an online component also predate this patent, but don't have the nearby limiting display issue.
And yes, as parent stated, clients aren't trusted in MMORPGs, so the server handles all movement and momentum, however, I did see source for one (FOSS MMORPG) 'hint' about where the client thought it was to deal with lag issues (which may be patent infringing). From the games I've played, however, that is not the norm and you rubber band to wherever the server thinks you are. Incidentally, most I've seen wouldn't trust a game to pass a vector - just a direction and a mapping of keys and buttons. Server handles velocity and momentum as well as absolute position.
Parent
Re:EQ might be better than UO for this one. . . (Score:5, Informative)
Being an avid MMO player from UO to current, as well as being a 3D developer on the Unreal Engine, I can make for some useful input here.
The original UO was indeed a 2D isometric client. Third Dawn brought 3D aspects to the game, though the world was still rendered in isometric view. It just looked more 3Dish. There were however mods/ports to UO that rendered a 3D world! They were buggy as heck though, but you could (in theory) play in the UO world with a 3D client. (Though it was a third party client).
Now, EQ was a true 3D world. No if's or but's about it.
The whole bit about the number of avatars to display, that's more really related to engine/hardware performance. Basically, when developing an environment developers need to look at polygons on a screen. This is one of the main restricting factors in developing a world. The more polygons a graphics card has to render, the longer it takes. It's not the only thing, but at the time that this patent was filed, it was certainly one of the most important things.
Now, avatars in a game generally have a much much higher polygon count than the environment around them, so naturally restricting the number shown might be very beneficial to rendering a game world nicely, however, soon after this patent was originally filed, a bright spark came up with the idea of not removing entire actors, but adding a LOD factor into models. Basically, it means that the further something is away from the camera, the less polygons it will use. This can also be ingeniously used to reduce the polygons per actor/model in the camera view if the number starts getting too high.
To use the obligatory car analogy, if I want to limit my game engine to displaying 100 polygons on the screen at a time, I can render a car with 100 polygons, but also allow the code to reduce these polygons to 50 if a second car comes onto the screen. Should I need to have 10 cars on the screen at once, they would each be reduced to 10 polygons.
Don't the servers already know the position of the avatar, and the clients just send a vector, that is, a request to move a certain number of units in a particular direction, at which point the server calculates a new position from the original postion + the vector?
The section you write about actors and client/server relative positions is sort of right. It's not far off anyhow. Here is how things work in just about all client/server applications now.
The server sets the original position to the client - when a new level loads for example. The the client sends data as to where it wants to go and both the server and client move the character around. Now, due to a number of factors such as latency, packet loss as well as a number of others, the two locations will become out of sync. However, rather than the server being updated with the client's location, what happens is that the client is updated with the server's location of where it things the character is. This sometimes leads to what is known as the "slingshot effect" where characters (or other actors) suddenly update in the client view and appear to slingshot around the screen to catch up. A notable exception to this rule is World of Warcraft, which does actually have servers that will quite happily allow a character anywhere in the world that the client lets them get. This has resulted in some rather funny "exploits" where people altered their clients and walked past mobs to get to the final boss in an instance and then just started attacking it. This may have been fixed in one of the expansions however. While I am not entirely sure, I think that D&D Online may have also suffered from the client updating the server with actor locations, as I recall there was a considerable number of movement hacks and exploits in that game.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
would "draw distance" be considered fallout of excess avatars?
FILED in 2000, but its a continuing application (Score:3, Interesting)
From the patent itself: Related U.S. Application Data
(63) Continuation of application No. 08/747,420, filed on Nov. 12, 1996, now Pat. No. 6,219,045.
Now educate yourself on continuing patents:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_patent_application [wikipedia.org]
Now look at the dates for release of Ultima Online and Everquest:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_online [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everquest [wikipedia.org]
Also if you look at the claims for the patent it requires CLIENT software that does considerably more client-state tr
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm certainly not going to defend this patent. But I did read it, and I don't see how any of the terminal-based MUD-like games apply. The very first claim specifies a client process and a server process, and the client process receiving positional information of a subset of the users in the world and the client determining what is to be displayed, then displaying avatars for users.
In addition, simple technologies like VRML and Flash, without an avatar and virtual world built on them, wouldn't be prior art
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Re:Prior Art? - WTH? (Score:3, Interesting)
NCSoft has Lineage and Lineage II which, though not very popular in the US, I believe are very popular in Korea (which is where NCSoft started). As the other poster in this thread commented, the City of Heroes/City of Villains game, as far as I know, is still quite popular and is making money. Sure, Tabula Rasa is being shut down, but where are you getting the idea that the whole company is going bankrupt?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Bilski? (Score:4, Informative)
Bilski will invalidate this extremely quickly. I guess the company suing really thought NCsoft won't figure that out, or maybe they wanted it to be invalidated that fast?
Are you a patent attorney? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because many patent attorneys are not entirely sure WTF Bilski has actually done to software patents. And "invalidate this extremely quickly" rarely happens in patent law after a patent has been granted. There are many levels of appeals, etc.
The Bilski decision invalidated a business method patent that was so abstract it could be done in a person's head. The dicta [nonbinding precedent -- stuff unnecessary for the specific holding] of Bilski said some soothing things that made certain computer algorithms appear vulnerable.
But really, do not overestimate Bilski. And don't forget the Supreme Court hasn't yet weighed in on whether it will deny cert to Bilski ... [at least I am not aware of any denial...]
Parent
LambdaMOO (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, Xerox beat you to it. They invented everything first.
Re:LambdaMOO (Score:4, Funny)
-This idea was invented by Shampoo
...which caused/causes/is causing/will have caused an infinite causal regression...loop...thing...
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Re:LambdaMOO (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:LambdaMOO (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Shot down faster than you can say prior art (Score:5, Funny)
Somewhere a NCsoft lawyer is praticing his layups while saying *swish*
It is a continuation of a 1996 patent application (Score:3, Informative)
... and you'll need to wade your way through 35 USC s102 and related case law to know whether alleged prior art defeated the novelty of this patent.
It's a crappy patent -- I hate it, it's lame, and I think it is pretty damn obvious and does not advance the art -- but as to whether there is prior art, that's another story.
[*Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, but I am a law student.]
Correction... (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, this takes some gigantic balls. Granted I only read the abstract, but Ultima and Everquest were active before this shit patent was even filed.
<melodramatic rant!>
Only when we can throw patent examiners in prison for such gross negligence will we have true patent reform!
</melodramatic rant!>
Correction to your Correction (Score:4, Informative)
From the patent itself: Related U.S. Application Data
(63) Continuation of application No. 08/747,420, filed on Nov. 12, 1996, now Pat. No. 6,219,045.
Now educate yourself on continuing patents:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_patent_application [wikipedia.org]
Now look at the dates for release of Ultima Online and Everquest:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_online [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everquest [wikipedia.org]
People on Slashdot discussing the Law sound as informed as your average senior citizen would sound on here discussing tech. "I PUT THE ETHERNET INTO THE HARD DRIVE WHY DOESN'T MY AOL WORK?!"
There's a reason why people spend three years of their life in law school. It's not for their health.
Parent
Re:Correction to your Correction (Score:5, Informative)
CONTINUED = invalidated if the state of the art eclipses the parts they add in the continuation.
Sure but what you are discussing is called a "continuation-in-part" which is a continuation that adds new material to the old patent that isn't supported by the original specification. Continuations in part are tricky because they have two priority dates associated with them. A regular continuation is when the patentee claims different things that are supported by the original specification.
Reread this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_patent_application [wikipedia.org]
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, it shouldn't (I'd say can't but you never know...). The patent is for *three dimensional* networked games.
What's bad about this patent is that it doesn't talk at all about 3D. The vast majority of the patent is talking about how to route messages to the clients (in a *very* vague way).
This is a great example of a patent that must be struck down. There are *no* details describing how they accomplish most of the claims. And even those things that have details, they are vague. For instance, they
The patent (Score:2)
On Google Patent Search: 7,181,690 [google.com].
IANAL. I think I can summarize the patent like this: a system which displays the player's avatar and a limited number of other players' avatar based on virtual presence, plus the server software which tells the client what to display.
I would think that depending on the interpretation of "display", this patent could be invalidated by any text-based MUD. I could easily display the location of other players avatars, and I'm sure there's a MUD out there which could render the
Re: (Score:2)
Prior art would be Conquest and similar games: 2D space-war simulators with multiple players. Central server, each player ran a client that talked to the server, players could join or leave a game and the game would add or remove their units from the universe. Display was rather primitive seeing as it ran on ASCII-text terminals connected to the computer through serial ports, but it did all the basics. The only thing it didn't do was use a cluster of servers, and see KSR Teleflex for that. Clustering was we
Habitat was early with graphical Avatars, etc. (Score:2)
Blizzard. (Score:5, Funny)
If only they had tried to go after Blizzard... Worlds.com would have had their patent invalidated in a very epic way, if you will. :P
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It's a quest item, not a drop.
Obligatory IANAL but... (Score:2, Informative)
Yeah, prior art?
UO began development before the first patent was filed, was publicly demonstrated technology, and pretty much already did everything mentioned between the two patents.
Obvious point being that UO is a 2D game - or is it? It has three directions of movement, but is merely rendered in military projection by the client. As far as the server goes, every avatar is represented by an X, Y, Z coordinate set.
Draw shortcuts/prioritization by proximity, amount of other avatars/mobiles on screen? Yep.
Sca
Re: (Score:2)
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Having read the patent summary
That's your problem right there. You have to read the claims.
Sounds a Lot Like (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds a lot like my patent, "System and Method for Allowing People to Talk." Perhaps we should get all our lawyers together for a barbeque or something.
M
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Mmm...barbeque'd lawyers.
dumb shit (Score:3, Informative)
This is the dumbest most unprofessional patent I have ever seen.
Theres even a kids drawing in the patent. [google.com]
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LOL... liked the part where he described himself in his background paragraph as "Sharper than a brass tack." We shall see...
Re:dumb shit (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously... its people like you that give everyone else a bad name... if you have something constructive to add (yes his address and such might be useful for a reasonable campaign, if it is indeed the correct address and your not just an asshat trying to fuck with someone else...) great, but then you wish arson on the guy, it makes anything you just said totally invalid,.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As satisfying as this must have been to write, it was very poorly considered (unless you are outside of the reach of US law enforcement). Free speech doesn't include declaring a target and asking people to burn their house down.
And seriously, the whole internet witch hunt thing is seriously lame. I've seen too many of these moronic quests with a bunch of intertards chasing after often wrongly targeted people because they think it's giving them so
Patent fails the test. (Score:3, Informative)
The Supreme Court, however, has enunciated a definitive test to determine
whether a process claim is tailored narrowly enough to encompass only a particular
application of a fundamental principle rather than to pre-empt the principle itself. A
claimed process is surely patent-eligible under  101 if: (1) it is tied to a particular
machine or apparatus, or (2) it transforms a particular article into a different state or
thing.
http://ipwatchdog.com/cases/bilski.pdf [ipwatchdog.com]
Lets all work to invalidate frivolous software patents.
Why they chose NCSoft (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They chose NCSoft because their alternatives are Sony who probably have an entire building full of high priced land sharks avaiable for their defense, or going after WoW which generates enough revenue to purchase a couple of congress critters.
Patent trolling either company isn't for the faint of heart and you'd have to be damned sure you had a convincing case to try either.
NCSoft by comparison was one of the weakest of the pack(not in terms of quality of MMO's or anything like that, merely in terms of how s
Patent is nonsense.....prior art exists (Score:5, Insightful)
I presented public lectures on a system I developed called Cyberterm, back in the early 90s. I presented lectures at UK VR_SIG Meeting at deMontfort University in Leicester in 1995 and at the HITL (Human Interface Technology Lab) at the University of Washington in that same year. I can name names or people in attendance if required.
Each talk was advertised and attended by the general public and outlined Cyberterm's use of pretty much exactly the system described in the patent (which I had up and running at the time). The system had also been demonstrated to numerous other people around the world at the time and since then and was written about in WAVE and Virtual magazines in the late 90s and described in written detail in many online papers as well as a series of ariticles in the PCVR-Magazine (also in the late 90s). Some of these articles are still available online archived by the HITL Librarian.
As the author of this system and the underlying technology, I would say I have some copyright ownership of the technology I developed. I still have archives of the earlier code and it runs with a copyright message.
I'll be happy to claim a big chunk of any money worlds.com make. Patent attorneys and lawyers of other companies (NC-Soft for instance) wishing to defend themselves can contact me via linkedin.com (amongst other places).
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I did a Google search for Cyberterm I found Michael's paper about Cyberterm [washington.edu]. After reading the paper throughly, it seems to be prior art to most, if not all, claims of that patent. There is publish date of the paper, but the web page headers indicate a date of July, 1992. And the paper talks of release of source code in late '92, and the work that went into the project from the last year. I now have absolutely no worries at all that patent. To borrow a phrase, that patent is BUSTED!
And I wish I had know abo
1998 prior art for a truly scalable, 'P2P' MMO (Score:5, Informative)
This is something we were working on from 1998. We documented the design in some detail, and I released the documentation to prevent people from trying to patent it: http://www.annexia.org/freeware/fleet [annexia.org]
The innovation in this (never-built) MMO is that the design requires no server at all. It what might now be called "P2P" (although that term wasn't around at the time).
Rich.