Major MMO Publishers Sued For Patent Infringement 232
GameboyRMH writes "The Boston Globe reports that major MMO publishers (Blizzard, Turbine, SOE, NCSoft, and Jagex) are being sued by Paltalk, which holds a patent on 'sharing data among many connected computers so that all users see the same digital environment' — a patent that would seem to apply to any multiplayer game played between multiple systems, at the very least. Paltalk has already received an out-of-court settlement from Microsoft earlier this year in relation to a lawsuit over the Halo games. If Microsoft can't fend off Paltalk's legal attacks, the odds don't look good for their latest group of targets."
Software patents need to die. (Score:0, Informative)
Software patents need to drink paint and retard themselves out of existence.
You're damn right it is too broad (Score:4, Informative)
The good thing is that Blizzard should have enough resources to blow that patent out of the water.
Re:Uh... Nethack anyone (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My first thought (Score:5, Informative)
Patent 5822523, summarised:
The number of communications required to keep a game with N players updated with each other is O(N!). This patent suggests a method by which the communications are sent to a central server, with the server sending regular updates to each player of all the actions taken by the other N-1 players. The server includes the ability for clients to become part of a "group" which further limits the amount of communication required to something less than O(N). The patent attempts to claim the Nagle algorithm as a unique invention (ie: hold on to outgoing messages for a short time to potentially squeeze more data into one packet).
"Group" in this context would be similar to "instance" in World of Warcraft or "grid" in EVE Online.
If someone can explain how this is not an obvious solution to the problem, as evidenced by the parallel development of this technology by every MMO out there, I'd love to hear it.
Re:My first thought (Score:4, Informative)
And in a good example of previous art, MANY years ago, I used a chat program called "powwow" (yes, created by the Native American community), that not only allowed group interactions, but, had shared games, and the ability to surf the Net as a group (one URL click would take the entire group to that website) and many other group interactions.
Since this pedated paltalk, I suspect that the awards should go someplace BESIDES into their pocket.
here are some comments about Powwow....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paltalk
Re:Doom multiplayer video came out in 1993 (Score:2, Informative)
Seems obvious to me now, but it may have not been obvious in 1996. If you can prove Doom follows the same steps (isn't the source code available?), then there's prior art to invalidate it.
Re:Obviously IANAL or a USian (Score:3, Informative)
The vast majority of civil cases are carried out through state courts. Each state has slightly different protocols and procedures. And if the order of a lower court is inconsistent with federal law, it is possible to bring a case up to a higher court. But this costs additional time and money.
In many ways the US is still a confederation of small pseudo-nations, although that has been changing rapidly for the past 100 years.
Also it's a matter of perspective, to me it would be strange for a single system to centrally govern 300 million people.
Re:Is a web page a digital environment? (Score:1, Informative)
Did you read guys the patent at all? (Yeah, I know, of course not, what a stupid question.)
The patent is not about "digital environments", "sharing stuff" or "making stuff online". What it's about is a very specific method to reduce network rate and latency in server group messaging systems - making the communication more efficient.
It doesn't relate to web pages, bittorrent or mirroring in any way at all. Also, if you manage to dig up an earlier server group messaging system with reduced network rate and latency that isn't proof of prior art unless it's using the same method.
You see, it's not the concept or idea of doing something (the goal) that is patented, but rather how it's done (the solution).
Sorta (Score:5, Informative)
As usual, Slashdot's summaries are the "OMG, here's a broad mis-representation of the patent, so we can whine about it" trolling. I swear if someone invented a new clock mechanism, it would come out on Slashdot as "OMG, they're patenting the cog." Because apparently some people just try that hard to belong to a big family of clueless whiners.
Actually searching for HearMe's patents (since TFA mentions that the patent was bought from HearMe) actually shows that they're a bit more speciffic than "showing the same world on two PCs". Not by much, mind you, but still. So the actual debate would be whether it's a multiplayer game, but whether it implements the exact synchronization algorithm described there.
And if you want to help those companies, knowing what they need help with, might help more. And just "it was a multiplayer" game ain't it.
The actual patents that seem even remotely relevant are these:
1. Method and apparatus for loosely synchronizing closed free running raster displays [uspto.gov]
The problem is that I can't see how it even remotely applies to multiplayer games, except via an equivocation fallacy. It's about "seeing the same thing" in a much more literal way: literally seeing not just the same scene, but the exact same image and synchronizing the frames. As in, the VSync signal comes at the same moment.
I don't think any game does that at all.
It includes such tidbits as temporarily changing the video mode to interlaced (which should look the same, according to them -- except to anyone who isn't blind, it isn't), to change the timings on one monitor, then switch back to non-interlaced when the sync signals synchronized with each other.
Again, I don't think any actual game does that. I don't think interlaced modes are even used at all nowadays.
The second problem with it, is that it's been filed on 23 December 1997, i.e., a good 3 months after the launch of Ultima Online. So if they actually want to push the "it's about seeing the same thing" equivocation, it seems to me the defense doesn't even have to go as far back in time as your Xanadu. UO already showed the same thing.
2. Server-group messaging system for interactive applications [uspto.gov]
Basically this one is about this: you have a server and X clients, and all clients are sending packets to all other clients. Think, an IRC channel, basically. So they propose that instead of dumbly routing between clients, the server aggregates the packets and sends the aggregates periodically.
The first problem is that a MMO only does that in a very loose sense. It sends the resulting status, rather than the bundled messages from all other players.
The second problem is that even if they want to push the equivocation that that status processing is a form of aggregation, MUDs already did that. Whenever you entered a room and god a "PrincessLayMe and MrMacho are standing here", it was effectively an aggregate result of the previous movements of the two players.
Of course, this has the caveat that their patent actually mentions aggregating over an interval, and sending the status periodicially, which MUDs did not.
However here comes the third problem: the patent was applied in 1999, a solid two years after UO which _did_ do just that.
Re:Not prior art (Score:5, Informative)
I remember several discussions among writers of the early MUDs (about 1990 or so... on USENET?) that involved aggregation of character data between multiple servers and allowing players to move from one "world" to the next. Some of this was simply copying character data, but it also involved direct links between servers... where players moving from one "room" to the next could switch to a different server and have it appear seamless to somebody playing within the MUD.
Obviously this was for MUD servers of the same "class" where data would be shared, but the data sharing concepts were discussed including IP (internet protocol) packet standards that would be used for sharing user data and even "world" data between servers.
I do think some prior art could be pulled up from these discussions, and there certainly is nothing that current MMORPGs provide other than graphics that hasn't already been done in abundance more than two decades ago with the old text-based MUDs, MOOs, and MUSHes. If anything, those experiments are still ahead of the game other than providing a snazzy client interface. Unless it is a patent on how to efficiently render 3D graphics on extremely low bandwidth, I don't see how there could be anything genuinely novel that isn't nearly 20 years old or much older anyway.
FYI, the DIKU MUD, while an early pioneer, wasn't the first. Multiplayer virtual combat games go back to at least 1980, and the real classic, ADVENT (Will Crowther's Colossal Cave Adventure) came out in 1976... and was the real inspiration for most subsequent MUDs even if it wasn't necessarily "multi-player". The desire to make it multi-player, however, did become something to push people along. There were other multi-player combat games that are of a similar age that had to deal with these issues as well, some of which I did play in the 1970's.
Re:You're damn right it is too broad (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My first thought (Score:4, Informative)
If you read through the patent, it's basically the same as a mailing list that sends out digests. Trivial.
Actually, it's not *basically* the same. It's *exactly* the same. Almost every claim has prior art in standard mailing list management software that has existed practically forever.
I was thinking IRC + Nagle's algorithm as prior art, but I think you've hit the nail on the head there!